'.{SOUTHAMPTON ROW) ^ 



^^&^^"*fe 



LIBRARY 



>NGRE8S. 






J UNITED STATES ... {I 



b 



EASTERTIDE SERMONS 



PREACHED BEFOEE THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 
OX FOUR SUNDAYS AFTER EASTER, 1S66 



By HENRY ALFORD, d.d. 

DEAN OF CANTEKEURY 




LONDON: ALEXANDER STRAHAN. 

CAMBRIDGE : DEIGHTON, BELL, & CO. 

1866 



K 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. The Fact of the Kesurrection . . 1 

" Their words seemed to them as idle tales, and 
they believed them not." — Luke xxiv. 11. 

" This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all 
are witnesses.'* — Acts ii. 32. 



II. The Great Shepherd . . . .32 

"The God of peace, that brought again from the 
dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of 
the sheep." — Hebrews xiii. 20. 



III. The Shepherd and His Sheep . . 62 

" My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and 
they follow me : and I give unto them eternal 
life; and they shall never perish, neither 
shall any man pluck them out of my hand." 
—John x. 27, 28. 



IV CONTEXTS. 



PAGE 

IV. Expediency of the Lord's Eemoval . 92 

" It is expedient for you that I go away : for if I 
go not away, the Comforter will not come unto 
you." — John xvi. 7. 



I 

jftrst SunUag after faster. 

THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

" Their words seemed to them 
as idle tales, and, they be- 
lieved them not.''' — Litre 
xxiv. 11. 

"This Jesus hath God raised 
up, whereof we all are wit- 
nesses." — Acts ii. 32. 

fTlHE words spoken of in the former 
of these texts were of no common 
character. They formed, it is true, the 
report of the women who had returned 
from the sepulchre of the Lord, and this 



2 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

report might be regarded as tinged with 
mental excitement, and with feminine 
credulity. Yet the import of the words 
themselves deserved more consideration 
than that they should be treated as idle 
tales. The tidings, that the Lord was 
risen, purported to have been received 
from two men in shining garments, who 
had called to remembrance how He Him- 
self had said, while He was yet in Galilee, 
that He should be crucified, and rise 
again the third day. Now the disciples 
had heard these words from the lips of 
Jesus : and if they were disposed to 
treat lightly the calling of them to re- 
membrance, it may serve to show to 
what an extent their faith in Him as 
the Christ had been shaken. It would 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. o 

appear, that the frame of mind indi- 
cated by one of them this same day, was 
common to them all : " We trusted it 
had been He which . should have re- 
deemed Israel." Their past following of 
Jesus must have seemed to them a mis- 
take, of which they were now ashamed. 
We know how it is with ourselves, when 
some long-cherished scheme, wrought out 
with sanguine expectation, has been 
broken in upon by stern reality, and has 
passed out of the region of our earnest 
thoughts. What convinced us before, 
convinces no longer now. The sunlight 
colours have faded away ; the combina- 
tions of words which called up en- 
thusiasm have lost their power ; we try- 
to silence self-reproach in forgetfulness, 



4 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

and count ourselves happy if other men 
betray not their knowledge how deeply 
we stood committed. Even so had the 
dread realities of the cross and the 
sepulchre broken down the fair fabric of 
the disciples' hopes. What would they 
not now give never to have made the sad 
admission, " We believe and are sure 
that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God!" How would they wish to 
conceal from themselves that they had 
once spoken the w r ords ! All His say- 
ings, all His deeds of power — better 
bury them in His grave, and let the mys- 
teries which must surround them rest 
unmoved ; all that is now uppermost in 
their minds is, the bitter confession that 
they had been deceived, and the deter- 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. O 

mination to return to their common life, 
made sadder and wiser. 

We can hardly conceive that had the 
cross and the sepulchre been the end of 
the course of Jesus, His followers would 
have held together many months. It 
was possible, and lias not been without 
example in analogous cases, that the 
more ardent among them might have 
waited long for Him to rise again, or 
to come from heaven ; and that some, 
like baffled interpreters of prophecy, 
might have shifted on the fulfilment of 
His words from each disappointment to 
another and another future chance. But 
of these resources of deferred hope we do 
not find any even anticipatory indica- 
tion. The rumours of the resurrection 



6 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

were idle tales ; the words of promise on 
which they rested, were idle words. He, 
who had uttered them, though His me- 
mory might still be foudly cherished, 
had been proved, by the sternest of all 
proofs, to have been at least weak and self- 
deceived. Their confidence was utterly 
gone ; their hearts had fainted ; their 
spirits were prostrate. 

That such men should knit up again 
their ravelled and scattered expectations ; 
that these disciples, being what we know 
them to have been, should have recovered 
heart, as the narrative tells us, and as 
the worlds history shows us they did, 
is simply inconceivable, supposing that 
nothing more happened after the deposi- 
tion in the tomb. We cannot imagine 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. i 

them, crushed, disappointed, deceived 
men, standing up before the victorious 
enemies of their disgraced Master, and 
proclaiming Him a Prince and a Savi- 
our. Mere strength of love for Him 
would not suffice for this. They had all 
declared themselves ready to go with 
Him to prison and to death, and had 
failed and fled away in the hour of His 
trial. That which they would not do 
when He was present and suffering be- 
fore their eyes, would they be likely to 
do, now that He was dead, and fading out 
of their memories day by day ? What 
they dared not face when they were 
still buoyed up with hopes that He 
might achieve supernatural victory, were 
they likely to stand against, now that 



8 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

defeat had branded Him an impostor 
and a criminal ? Can men like these, 
without any intervening change of cir- 
cumstances, persuade themselves in good 
faith to proclaim Him as the Son of 
God \ It surely is not in human nature 
to operate on itself such a change, as we 
must suppose to have passed upon them 
before this could be the case. And if it 
be said that they counselled together, 
and put before the world the concerted 
fiction of His resurrection, then is the 
matter, if possible, still more difficult 
to conceive. Up to the very moment 
of His betrayal, their expectations had 
all tended one way, — to the establish- 
ment of an outward earthly kingdom, 
in which they were to reign as His 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 9 

assessors. Those expectations are baf- 
fled ; and, according to this hypothesis, 
in the midst of the bewilderment of their 
disappointment, they come forward, as- 
serting facts to have happened to Him 
of a nature far surpassing all that they 
had ever conceived before, and preach- 
ing a kingdom, the very mention of the 
character of which would before have been 
to them gall and bitterness. It were 
indeed a strange way of dishonestly con- 
spiring on behalf of their Master and 
themselves, to change ambition into self- 
denial, proud hopes into the loss of all 
things, the carnal into the spiritual. 

Against these insufficient solutions, let 
us set the facts of the history. At one 
great feast of the Jews, when Jerusalem 



10 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

was crowded with strangers from all parts, 
Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, and the 
hopes of His followers were crushed. 
At the next great festival, six weeks 
after, we find those same followers stand- 
ing together in a body, with one who had 
denied Jesus in the hour of His trial 
acting as their spokesman, and proclaim- 
ing, as in the second of my texts, " This 
Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all 
are witnesses." We find them maintain- 
ing this in spite of prohibitions, in spite 
of stripes, in spite of threatenings. They 
say they cannot but speak the things 
which they have seen and heard. The 
presence of the council which had con- 
demned their Master does not deter them 
from thus testifying of Him. The very 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 11 

servants of the high priest terrified Peter 
before ; but the high priest himself, and 
the assembled Sanhedrim, have no terrors 
for him now. 

How are we to account for these things, 
my brethren ? Here are cowards become 
brave men ; disowners of a persecuted 
Friend when He was in danger, become 
His witnesses and upholders now that 
He is crushed beneath contempt. And 
this they carry on not one nor two years, 
not against threats and stripes only, but 
through long lives spent in this testi- 
mony, and even unto death, sealing their 
witness with their blood. 

These last words may perhaps remind 
you of a well-known argument regarding 
one portion of Christian evidence. But 



12 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

I am not at present on common ground 
with that argument. What I am aiming 
at is, not the conclusion that credit is due 
to them as honest men, but the supply- 
ing of something between their two re- 
corded states of mind, which shall recon- 
cile the change with probability, and 
make the whole into a connected his- 
tory. 

And I submit to you, my brethren, 
that there is one way, and but one way, 
of accounting for this change. And that 
one way is, that the Resurrection really 
took place, as we are told it did. I 
submit to you that, unless Jesus actually 
rose from the dead, the history of Chris- 
tianity would have been impossible ; that 
could not have happened which has hap- 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 13 

pened, and the results of which we see 
at this day. Considering the story of the 
life and death of Jesus, its progress from 
pretension to defeat, from popularity to 
rejection, from glory to shame, — the only 
solution of the question, How comes it 
that there is a Christian in the world at 
the present day, is, that " we are wit- 
nesses of His resurrection." 

And as regards the change which came 
upon the disciples, this does resolve all 
its circumstances, easily and naturally. 
As we have seen, their hearts and hopes 
had died within them. The past had 
been a deplorable mistake. Each one, 
we may well imagine, was beginning to 
form his plan, how best to bear his bitter 
disappointment, and they were scheming 



14 THE FACT OF THE EESUREECTIOX. 

how with least public notice to return to 
Galilee, and to fall back into the common 
life of the Jews around them : — when lo, 
there arises the strange rumour, that 
He that was dead is alive again. At 
first it is treated as an idle tale. But 
one and then another is not content 
without a visit to the sepulchre. There 
some of them see, and believe. The 
Scripture, and the Lord's own often 
repeated words, are carried for the first 
time into their hearts. And now mes- 
sages of plainer import begin to thicken 
around them. The Lord has been seen 
— seen and heard by one and another — 
not an empty apparition, but the well- 
known form and voice of Him who had 
been taken from them. And upon this, 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 15 

strange revulsions of feeling pass through 
their minds. Half believing, half doubt- 
ing, the little band collect together to 
await what may happen. More and 
more certain, as the day wears on, come 
the repeated tidings. Again and again, 
we may well believe, the evidence of His 
appearance is given to eager inquirers. 
Some, who would not believe before, can- 
not hear too often now. One at least 
whom we know of, remains wholly in- 
credulous, and refuses to entertain the 
thought, nay, even to join the assembling 
of themselves together. Meanwhile the 
risen Saviour has been seen by one whose 
word carries general conviction : " The 
Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared 
unto Simon." 



16 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

Such is the joyful news which is pass- 
ing from mouth to mouth, as the shades 
of evening fall around them, when two 
of their number arrive, eager with fresh 
and certain intelligence. A traveller had 
walked with them by the way, and had 
discoursed of their broken hopes ; had 
reproached them with unbelief of the 
prophets, and in words which made their 
hearts glow within them, set forth what 
Christ ought to have suffered, and to 
enter into His glory. And when at their 
request He went with them into their 
lodging, the stranger took bread, and 
blessed and brake as He had been wont- 
to do : and behold, it was the Lord. The 
tale had hardly been told, when the risen 
one Himself stood in the midst of them, 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 17 

seen and heard by all. * Peace be with 
you/' are His solemn words of greeting : 
" peace upon your troubled spirits ; the 
peace of blessed assurance and tranquil 
certainty, after the fierce storm which 
had shattered your hopes." " Then/' adds 
the beloved disciple, in his majestic sim- 
plicity, — "then were the disciples glad 
when they saw the Lord/' 

What power is there, my brethren, in 
these few words ! From what grief to 
what exultation do they take us ! From 
what defeat to what triumph ! There 
have been many strange days in this 
world's history, but there was never a 
day so strange as this one of the Resur- 
rection, because never one that resembled 
it in that which had happened. Only 
c 



18 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

that once has the human spirit thus been 
touched ; only once transported from so 
great a sorrow to so great a joy. It is 
a day much to be remembered, when a 
beloved life has been hanging in doubt, 
and the crisis passes, and sleep succeeds 
to fever, and thankfulness to harassing 
anxiety. It was a day to be remembered, 
when one was reading that sentence of 
death in the forum at Mytilene, and the 
ship of mercy came in, and wailing was 
turned into mirth."" It was a day of 
light and gladness, when Lazarus came 
back from his tomb, and the sisters eyes 
once more rested on the form they had 
never again hoped to see. But none of 
those days was like this one. For no such 

* See Thucydides, iii. 49. 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 19 

venture had ever been cast on one life 
before. It was not love, it was not 
admiration, it was not trust, as we use 
these words between man and man : God 
had looked forth in the midst of them; 
God had been manifest in the flesh ; a 
voice had sounded from heaven ; one had 
gone in and out among them who had 
gathered all thoughts and all hopes upon 
Himself, and lifted them above them- 
selves, and above man, and above the 
world, into other regions of love, and 
trust, and wonder, than man with man 
ever dwells in. And when that life sank 
down, and that adorable Form was marred, 
— great in proportion, great beyond hu- 
man measure was their woe ; heaven 
itself was blotted, and darkness had 



20 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

fallen upon the earth ; because no face 
looked on them as that Face, no voice 
spoke as that Voice ; and all was void 
and silent. And now what has risen up 
in that void — what sound has broken 
that silence ? No human comforter — no 
voice of empty admonition, or fruitless 
persuasion. As the loss had been, so is 
the gain ; as the sorrow, so the joy. It 
is He Himself : it is not the sorrow 
healed, — not the past made up for ; no, 
it is infinitely more than all this. A new 
order of things has begun, a new life 
has sprung up ; His resurrection is also 
their resurrection ; they are not com- 
forted mourners, but they are new-born 
fellow- workers ; the harvest which seemed 
to have been but an heap in the day 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 21 

of desperate sorrow, is become precious 
seed, for another and an endless sowing. 

And with joy comes responsibility. 
We do not, at this distance of time, and 
with our long-accustomed handling of 
Christian evidence, feel one-half of that 
which is implied in the Acts of the 
Apostles and in the writings of St. John 
by that word M witness," — "the bearing 
of witness." But we too know some- 
thing of the great and sudden investiture 
of responsibility, how it solemnizes men, 
how it strengthens men, how it trans- 
forms men. Look at the stripling left 
by the dread stroke of bereavement, at 
the head of an orphan family. See him 
crushed by the snapping of his love, left 
guideless, counselless, prostrate in his 



22 THE FACT OF THE EESUEEECTIOX. 

tears, needing support as he looks into 
the closing grave. But see him again, 
rising with unwonted strength, endowed 
with faculties unsuspected before, having 
at once put on the balanced wisdom of 
manhood, having changed passion for 
deliberation, negligence for watchfulness, 
no repute, or ill repute, for good fame 
daily increasing, and all deserved. And 
some such change, but greater, because 
all life and all thoughts were involved in 
it, passed on these men from that day 
forward. " They could not but speak of 
those things which they had seen and 
heard." This testimony of witnessed fact 
had become a necessity of their lives ; 
they went about invested with its re- 
sponsibility. Before few, before many, 



THE FACT OF THE BESUEKECTION. 23 

before small and great, captains and pre- 
fects, priests and princes, they gave their 
witness of the Resurrection. 

And with joy and responsibility came 
also strength. In proportion to the 
greatness of the event, in proportion to 
the vastness of the change, in propor- 
tion to the working of that Spirit, who, 
granting to each man severally as He 
will, yet grants not without preparation, 
grants not out of measure with circum- 
stances, — in these proportions was their 
testimony given with power, so that it 
bore down all opposition. Between Peter 
. disclaiming Jesus, Peter weeping bitterly 
for his faithlessness, Peter returning from 
the sepulchre, wondering in himself, and 
Peter standing before the Council and pro- 



24 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

claiming that there is none other name 
given under heaven among men whereby 
we must be saved, there needs no link 
supplied, if this joy gave responsibility, 
and strength followed : but otherwise I 
see not how the weakness and the power 
are to belong to the same : how the same 
man is to utter in a few short days some 
of the weakest and basest, and also some 
of the boldest and grandest words in the 
world's history. 

And thus, my brethren, the void left 
by disappointment was filled up by His 
form who had taught them, and led them, 
and loved them, and made to them great 
and precious promises of future glory. 
But when we say this, we are not perhaps 
aware how much our words imply. What, 



for example, was our Lord's death to them 
before ? That which we have seen it to 
be : even defeat, disgrace and shame. What 
is it now ? Simply the most glorious 
thing which could occupy the thought 
or the affections. He is risen as He had 
said. Then He had power all the while 
— power over His enemies, power over 
death ; then every smart of the scourge, 
every fainting step up that Via dolorosa, 
every pang on the cruel cross, was His 
own voluntary act ; then is it strictly 
true, not that, in the ordinary sense, He 
gave up the ghost, but that He delivered 
up His spirit, dying as none else have 
died — having power to lay down His life, 
as He had also power to take it again. 
And thus His crown of thorns has be- 



26 THE FACT OF THE KESUBBECTIOX. 

come a diadem of victory ; thus the whole 
character of that eventful day is changed 
— its memory has passed from the side of 
deprivation and shame, to the side of 
beauty and glory. And yet again, What 
was our Lord Himself to them before ? 
Doubtless, a dearly loved friend whom 
they could never forget ; a master who 
had long led them. And what are the 
sayings and acts of such dear friends 
when death has taken them from us \ 
Things altogether of the past : fading, or 
sometimes unfading memories, but still 
memories. They may have been solemn 
injunctions which were to bring forth 
fruit in the future. Still, their root is in 
the past ; they are bound to the dying 
look of one now no more with us, and the 



THE FACT OF THE KESURKECTIOS. 2/ 

tone of a voice which we have long ceased 
to hear. But far other has our Lord be- 
come to them, and have His sayings and 
acts become to them. Now this is of 
immense importance as regards their re- 
membrance and reproduction of the words 
and deeds of His life. He is not a friend, 
a master, departed, and taken from them ; 
He and His words are not things of the 
past : He is restored to them, not as be- 
longing to the present, but to the future. 
All that He said, all that He did while 
He was with them, is not only dear to 
memory, but has become a seed of hope, 
a source of life, a warrant for action, a 
safeguard in suffering. And He himself 
is not " He who should have redeemed 
Israel," but the Father of the age to 



28 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

come, the ever-present, and also the ever 
looked-for. 

And again, it seems to me that thus 
much, and no less than this, is a postulate 
required for the acknowledged facts of 
the disciples' conduct and writings re- 
garding our Lord. We all know the 
mighty difference made in the power and 
grasp of memory, by a change having 
come over any certain period that is past, 
when a particular space of time, from 
having been regarded as not worth re- 
membering, has been shown to have been 
important, and its recollection to be preg- 
nant with solemn consequences. We have 
all known what it is to sit down and look 
back over a certain number of days or 
hours, catching at the floating threads of 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 29 

suggestion, and from them following up 
words and acts that had seemed for ever 
gone from us. And though we believe that 
the holy Apostles were specially enabled 
by the Spirit of Truth to set down what 
Jesus had said and done, yet we are no less 
convinced that whatever is received must 
be according to the mode of the receiver ; 
and we know this to have been so much 
the case with them, that while three of 
them have given us reports of our Lord's 
life and words mainly the same, with cer- 
tain characteristic differences, the fourth 
has composed a representation of it so 
entirely his own, that unbelievers have 
even denied its compatibility with them. 
May we not then suppose that the 
Spirit's help came to them mainly by 



30 THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 

means of, and as intensifying, this re- 
surrection of the memory of Him and 
His words, brought about by His 
altered place in their thoughts, con- 
sequent on the fact of His own Resur- 
rection % 

And thus, my brethren, it is that, while 
we search in vain for any explanation 
of their conduct and of the subsequent 
history of Christianity on the hypothesis 
of His having remained in the tomb, the 
simple belief of the facts as the Gospels 
relate them to us, easily and entirely 
accounts for all that happened then — for 
all that has happened since. 

The rumour was to them as an idle 
tale. And so it would ever have remained, 
if indeed it had been remembered at all, 



THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. 31 

unless Jesus had risen : nothing but the 
fact believed because seen, could have 
made them proclaim themselves its wit- 
nesses : could have continued that testi- 
mony down to this distant day : could 
have assembled us, and the great 
Christian multitude of all nations 
kindreds and tongues, on this the 
weekly festival, in this the triumphant 
season, of the Resurrection of the Lord. 



II. 

SeconU iSuntJag after lEaster. 

THE GKEAT SHEPHERD. 

' ' The God of peaee, that brought 
again from the dead our 
Lord Jesus, that great 
Shepherd of the sheep." — 
Heb. xiii. 20. 

TN these words, we have the main 
theme of the Easter season bound on 
to the special subject of this one of its 
Sundays. To-days Gospel brings before 
us our Blessed Lord's description of 
Himself as the Good Shepherd : and in 



THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 33 

the Epistle we are reminded that we 
were as sheep going astray, but are 
now returned to the Shepherd and 
Bishop of our souls. In parts of Western 
Christendom, the day is named the " Sun- 
day of the Good Shepherd." The Writer 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in con- 
cluding with a solemn prayer for his 
readers, joins, in my text, the resurrec- 
tion of the Lord with His pastoral office. 
So that we may be sure the Church had 
a purpose, in introducing Him to us as 
the Shepherd of our souls, on this first 
Sunday after the eight days' festival of 
the Resurrection. 

No similitude was so obvious, as ap- 
plying to the Redeemer and His Church, 
— none was so ancient. In the primitive 

D 



34 THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 

days of the earth, and of man, the first 
keeper of sheep had fallen down slain in 
the midst of his flock. The whole history 
of the patriarchs was associated with 
pastoral life. " Thy servants are shep- 
herds/' was the confession of the sons of 
Jacob to the Egyptian king, who hated 
the name. Their descendants had been 
led through the wilderness by one who 
had for forty years fed his flock in that 
very desert of Sinai : led, as we had it in 
the Psalms of this morning, " like sheep 
by the hand of Moses and Aaron." The 
poet-king, the central figure in the sacred 
history, had tended his father s sheep on 
the rocky heights of Bethlehem, and 
there had sung those sweet strains by 
which Jehovah, as the Shepherd, had 



THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 35 

been for ever borne into the praises of 
Israel. And in the prophets, God had 
taken up the same strain, and swelled 
it onward into tones of reproach and 
threatening, till it rang shrill through 
the ears of Israel in denunciation of 
false shepherds, and assertion of Himself 
as the true searcher out and leader of 
His flock. So that when He came, in 
whom all types centred, and all pro- 
phecy was fulfilled, none need be sur- 
prised at His taking unto Himself the 
great similitude in all its fulness of 
meaning — at His standing and proclaim- 
ing, "I am the Good Shepherd f at His 
saying of His death of love, " The Good 
Shepherd layeth down his life for the 
sheep;" at His designating that night 



36 THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 

of terror by the prophetic words, " I will 
smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall 
be scattered ; " and His own act after 
His resurrection, by the pastoral promise, 
"After that I am risen I will go before 
you into Galilee." None need wonder 
that the threefold terms of reinstatement 
of the penitent Apostle should speak of 
tending my sheep and feeding my lambs ; 
nor that the farewell address of Paul at 
Miletus should put on the same form ; 
nor that Peter should exhort the elders 
to feed the flock of God which was 
among them, in expectation of the day 
when the chief Shepherd should appear. 
Only in the closing apocalyptic visions, 
anticipating the day when the media- 
torial course shall have past, do we find 



THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 37 

this character apparently laid aside or 
transferred : there our Blessed Lord is 
the Lamb as it had been slain, and He 
that sitteth on the throne is the Shep- 
herd, guiding His flock, and leading them 
to the fountains of the water of life. 

It is to this office of our risen Lord 
that I would now direct your attention ; 
speaking of it throughout more as a 
matter for the individual Christian life, 
than as belonging to the whole Church. 
I would beg of each of you to enter into 
his soul's chamber and shut his doors 
about him, while we enquire what this 
pastoral office of Christ is ; what it 
requires us to believe in the depths of 
our hearts respecting Him ; what en- 
couragements it holds forth to us ; what 



38 THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 

consolation it pours on our spirits when 
they are perplexed, or wounded, or faint- 
ing within us. 

The thought of Christ as the Shepherd 
of our souls touches us in many points. 
The first seems to be, our need of one 
superior to ourselves to rely upon. This 
feeling of reliance is almost a necessity 
to us. We are not happy as our own 
masters. We cannot face the dark fu- 
ture, we cannot meet the difficulties of 
the tangled present, we cannot contem- 
plate the sins and errors and short- 
comings of the terrible past, all alone. 
The soul yearns and seeks about for one 
to stand between it and danger, between 
it and uncertainty, between it and guilt. 
And herein lies the account of men 



THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 39 

giving their consciences to others to 
keep, and accepting difficult beliefs with- 
out question, and setting up over them- 
selves a guide esteemed infallible, — that 
they cannot bear to be entrusted with 
the keeping of themselves ; anxiety, 
restlessness, morbid scruples, mental pro- 
stration, are the consequences of their 
having to fulfil unaided so solemn a 
responsibility. Now Christ, by declaring 
Himself the Good Shepherd, by distin- 
guishing Himself from all other shep- 
herds, assumes, and warrants us in assert- 
ing of Him, the Headship over and the 
superiority to His whole flock, and every 
soul in it. And when I thus think of Him, 
it is as that superior being on whom, as 
regards His own character and position, 



40 THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 

I can unreservedly lean. He is, by the 
very terms of this designation of Himself, 
not one of my fellow-creatures, but one 
above me and above all of us, my Lord 
and my God. Any men, any body of 
men, any ordinance of man, is limited, is 
fallible : will not cover the extent of my 
need of reliance, will not by enactment, 
or by any other kind of foresight, have 
provided for my ten thousand individual 
wants and difficulties. But this great 
Shepherd, who is over all His flock, and 
over me, lies under no such disadvantage. 
I need not fear any fallibility, or any 
lack of power, when I look up to Him, 
when I trust Him, when I rely on His 
all-knowledge and all-mightiness. For it 
is impossible that He should have used 



THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 41 

this language with psalm and prophecy 
before Him, and intended it to imply less 
than His Divinity. He was speaking 
among those who were familiar with such 
addresses as, " Thou that dwellest be- 
tween the cherubim, Thou that leadest 
Joseph like a sheep :" with such words 
as " Jehovah is my Shepherd : I shall not 
want :" those who had not forgotten the 
chapter of Ezekiel above referred to, 
where the God of Israel draws the same 
distinction between Himself and the false 
shepherds ; who had in their minds the 
direct prophecy of Isaiah, " Behold the 
Lord God cometh, and His reward is 
with Him : He shall feed His flock like 
a shepherd." He could not have thus 
spoken, without having in view the whole 



42 THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 

course of accomplished redemption : when 
He described His exercising of this His 
pastoral office, He looked not on Himself 
as a Teacher with His disciples, lead- 
ing them in circuits round Galilee, but 
as exalted by God's right hand to be a 
Prince and a Saviour : as having all 
power given to Him in heaven and in 
earth. So that, and this is surely a 
weighty point in our soul's regarding of 
the matter, we begin with the assurance 
that in all that requires power, wisdom, 
goodness, our Shepherd, He on whom we 
are to rely and cast our. being and our 
hopes, is not limited but infinite ; not 
man but God. Less than this will not 
suffice, if the reliance is to be entire and 
unbroken. Even when, in this matter of 



THE GEEAT SHEPHEED. 43 

the souls welfare, man casts himself on 
man, or on a body of men, or on a human 
ordinance or polity, there is always divine 
presence, authorization, or guidance, sup- 
plied in the background, so that the ulti- 
mate stay is not man but God. 

Now it might be supposed, that the 
soul having such a Shepherd as this, in- 
finite in power, wisdom, and goodness, 
would desire no more ; would also on its 
part be perfect and unbroken in its re- 
liance. And if our inward feeliogs fol- 
lowed the law of our reason, — if the man, 
compounded of various affections and 
sympathies, answered always to the helm 
of his convictions, this miofht be so. But 
as it is, our convictions dwell as it were 
in one part of us, and our feelings and 



44 THE GREAT SHEPHEED. 

affections are evoked in another. We 
are fragmentary and inconsequent. The 
steersman may turn the helm according 
to rule, but the course of the ship is 
erratic. The Shepherd may be almighty, 
but the sheep do not obey Him ; all-wise, 
but they do not believe Him ; all-good, 
but they do not trust Him. The region 
of conviction must be connected with the 
region of sympathy. The sterner ma- 
terial of the one needs knitting on and 
combining with the tender and delicate 
fabric of the other. If I am to cast my- 
self on this my Shepherd, I must have 
more data respecting Him, than that He 
is Lord and God. The more worthily I 
conceive of Him as being this, the less 
shall I feel warranted in the casting my- 



THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 45 

self upon Him in full, constant, familiar 
reliance. On the one hand will expand 
the majesty and symmetry of His per- 
fections : on the other will dwindle into 
insignificance, or only assert its presence 
by its unworthiness and incongruity, my 
own contemptible littleness, wayward- 
ness, selfishness. Shall such an one as 
He ever reach out His crook to reclaim 
such an one as me ? Can my loathsome 
wounds ever be touched or bound up by 
His pure and heavenly hand ? And if 
not, where is my soul's reliance ? where is 
the comfort I want, where the guidance ? 
So that our weak and suffering hu- 
manity wants more than the conviction 
that Jehovah is our Shepherd. More 
is needed by the entire requirements 



46 THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 

of the very similitude itself. What 
were the shepherd, infinitely removed 
from the sheep % Some great owner of 
flocks, reigning elsewhere in unapproach- 
able majesty 1 How could He thus be a 
shepherd at all \ They look for Him in 
their midst, reclining with them in their 
green pastures, buffeting with the storm 
that blinds them, caring daily and 
nightly for their safety ; their danger 
must be His danger, their lot His lot. 
In one sense, as they are, so must He 
be : of the same suffering flesh, of the 
same feeling heart. Conviction of His 
existence is not enough : even sight of 
Him is not enough : reliance needs touch 
for its assurance ; He must lay hold of 
them, not merely by what He is, but 



THE GEEAT SHEPHERD. 



also by what they are. And here is the 
mystery of your inner being and of 
mine, which the Incarnation and the Re- 
surrection of the Son of God have solved 
for us : solved, it is true, by a greater 
mystery ; but raised us to the height of 
that greater mystery by solving. Before 
it was solved the two lay over against 
one another, — Jehovah in His perfection, 
the soul in her weakness, and un worthi- 
ness, and sorrows. How is one to touch 
the other ? Rather, how is the weaker 
ever to regard the stronger without 
shrinking and terror % But what if the 
divine Shepherd have been Himself a 
man of sorrows, and acquainted with 
griefs What, if having Himself been 
tempted, He know how to succour them 



48 THE GEEAT SHEPHERD. 

that are tempted'? If He looks upon 
the dark passages of trial and the peril- 
ous footsteps of doubt and difficulty, not 
from the infinite height of divine Omni- 
science, but from the depths of His own 
humiliation, His own dejection, His own 
agony ? Will not God thus (strange to 
say) have gained by becoming man that 
knowledge of personal experience which 
is the most powerful source of sympa- 
thy % What encouragement would thus 
be given to every fainting, every doubt- 
ing, every unworthy and sinful soul in 
the flock to pour out its griefs to the 
Shepherd, to reach out the wounded 
limb, and lay open the unwelcome sore, 
for Him to bind up and to solace ! 
And even so it is, my brethren. This 



THE GKEAT SHEPHEED. 49 

further requisite than even divine per- 
fection itself: this asking of the flock 
for one to rely on who shares their 
weaknesses, hath our Shepherd, in the 
greatness of His love, provided for. He 
is one of ourselves. All that man 
feels as man, He hath felt likewise. The 
avenues of temptation which were open 
in Adam, were open in Him. All the 
sinking of the burdened spirit, all the 
shrinking from pain and suffering, all the 
struggle of the human will against the 
superior resolve of resigned obedience, 
He has undergone in His own person. 
So that when these, or the like of these, 
are laid open to Him, He receives them. 
He treats them, not only as God looking 
down on His creatures with pity, but as 

E 



50 THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 

man, yearning for them with sympathy. 
Nor have His triumph and His passage 
through the tomb endangered this part- 
nership, or quenched these sympathies ; 
nay, it is by virtue of this very victory 
that He has put them on in their com- 
pleteness. On that glorious Easter 
morning, when He had but now assumed 
the majesty of His resurrection- triumph, 
and from the yonder bank of the river of 
death, bright with immortal day and 
unfading flowers, looked back on those 
who had fled from Him in His hour 
of trial, it was in no words of estrange- 
ment or repudiation that He clothed His 
message : " Go to my brethren, and say 
unto them, that I ascend to my Father 
and to your Father, to my God and 



THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 51 

your God." He is still our Brother ; 
His Father, still our Father ; His God, 
still our God. 

But even to this requisite one more par- 
ticular is needful. What warrant have 
I for knowing that the sympathy of this 
Good Shepherd extends to me, — extends, 
that is, to all His flock of mankind ? 
His own griefs He has borne, His own 
trials He has passed through, His own 
temptations He has overcome ; but how 
does this ensure that He can feel those of 
all our race ? He, as man, was without 
sin ; how do I know that He embraces 
in His sympathy those who are carnal, 
sold under sin ? The comparatively up- 
right and pure, these may have a right 
to come and claim His compassion for 



52 THE GREAT SHEPHEED. 

their failings ; or His heart may be 
larger than this, and having come to 
seek and to save the lost, He may receive 
many unworthy, many that are impure : 
but how am I to be sure that He re- 
ceives all ? And, if one of all mankind 
be excluded, where is our claim to be 
His, and to rely on Him % for may not 
that excluded one be myself? Such a 
matter as the soul's reliance must not 
be imperilled on the uncertainty of 
an inference, nor left to be accepted 
or rejected on the mere surmise of 
a greater or less degree of sympathy 
and love. We are very weak and 
very wayward in this matter of inward 
trust, and no points will bear being left 
unassured. The reason may have pro- 



THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 53 

nounced all impregnable, but the heart 
may still tremble with fatal misgiving. 
That the Shepherd receives the guilty 
and unworthy, may be held for a truth, 
may be maintained against impugners, 
may be proclaimed to others in their 
doubt, while the very holder himself 
lays not the truth to his own soul, — 
has his own faithless escape from it. 
" The guilty and the unworthy 1 Doubt- 
less ; yet not such as I am." 

And here, brethren, comes in the im- 
portance of apprehending rightly the 
great doctrine of the Lord's incarnation, 
in all those particulars in which the 
creeds of the Church have set it forth 
and asserted it. It is the fashion of 
our day to use much rhetoric and much 



54 THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 

pathos respecting the love and gentle- 
ness of our Blessed Lord, and to give 
but a vague and hazy account of the 
great doctrines on which rest our share 
in His sympathy, and our claim to all 
that He has done. Never was there a 
time when these doctrines more required 
distinct statement, and substantiating 
by Scripture, by evidence, by the reason 
of the case. It has become our duty to 
reassert the objective reality of the cove- 
nant which God has made with man in 
Christ ; to secure once more the anchor- 
age-ground for men's souls and hopes ; to 
re-edify, if it may be, that temple which 
foes are combining to attack and feeble 
friends not scrupling to betray. I know 
that the Lord Jesus is not only the good 



THE GREAT SHEPHEKD. 00 

Shepherd, but that He is my Shepherd, 
not only that there are some who may 
cast themselves upon Him, but that I 
may cast myself upon Him : — I know 
this, because He took the manhood, our 
whole nature, into Himself, into God. 
Had He as God been pleased to dwell 
in the person of an individual man, and 
thus to be tempted and suffer and 
triumph, — had such a thing as this been 
conceivable, then would the righteous- 
ness which He wrought out, and the 
merit of His sacrifice in death, and the 
triumph which he achieved over death, 
have belonged to Himself alone. Every 
mans personal being is insulated from 
that of every other man ; and neither 
the responsibilities, nor the trials, nor 



56 THE GKEAT SHEPHEKD. 

the victories, of one man in his own 
person can be transferred as personal 
perfections to another. But the Son 
of God did not this. He, remaining 
one and the same divine Person, took 
into that Divinity of His, not a distinct 
human personality, but the human 
nature, thus becoming its righteous 
Head, and the seed of righteousness and 
life and love in the whole of our man- 
hood. So that when He obeyed, when 
He was smitten for sin, when He over- 
came death, it was not for Himself, it 
was not for us as a personal human sub- 
stitute : His humanity was not limited, 
but included all of us : His obedience 
is ours, His satisfaction for sin is our 
redemption, His victory over death is 



THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 57 

life and immortality to us : so that " as 
in Adam all die, even so/' in the same 
inclusive manner, "in Christ shall all be 
made alive." And if I ask now what 
warrant have I for looking upon Christ 
as my Shepherd — what warrant for 
knowing that His divine power, that 
His human sympathies, are mine \ the 
question is answered, the doubt is set 
at rest, with the reception of the true 
doctrine of the Lord's incarnation and 
the Lord's resurrection in our human- 
ity. God made of one blood all nations 
on the earth. That one blood flowed in 
the veins of the Son of God : that one 
blood was shed for sin on the cross : that 
one blood beat with our pulses, throbbed 
with our anguish, is His and ours in its 



58 THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 

oneness. Therefore in Christ there is 
neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor 
free, neither male nor female, but in Him 
all are one. Here then is my warrant 
for knowing that all that temptation, 
all that suffering, all that purchasing of 
peace by His sacrifice, and sealing it by 
His triumph, extends to me, extends to 
every one who, with the poison of sin 
tainting him, shall turn and look on the 
Son of God. And my brethren, what 
strong consolation again is here! My 
warrant for committing myself to this 
good Shepherd is not the degree of my 
apprehension of His power, or of His 
love, or of His sympathy ; is nothing 
that I have gone through, nothing that 
I have attained unto, nothing that, un- 



THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 59 

less I reject Him against myself, I can 
lose : it is not an individual conformity, 
but it is the taking up of a covenant 
right, the entering into and becoming 
possessed of a purchased inheritance. 

And, being all this to us, to every 
one of us,, being Jehovah our Shepherd, 
being man as we are, having taken into 
Himself, and bearing upon Him, our 
whole humanity, He acquired us as His 
flock, He purchased every one of us with 
the price of His own blood ; He shed it, 
not as a mere example of love, but to 
bring us out of ruin and guilt into the 
favour of God and a standing in His 
accepted righteousness. Here again is 
a doctrine which it is in our day the 
fashion to speak of, if at all, vaguely and 



60 THE GREAT SHEPHERD. 

obscurely : to cover up with flowers of 
rhetoric, so that it may or may not be 
recognized beneath them. Christ's Death 
is in our time much treated and well, 
but far too often timidly, in a half satis- 
fied and shrinking manner. But, my 
brethren, unless His death were this sacri- 
fice, unless the Good Shepherd thus laid 
down His life on behalf of the sheep, 
unless His resurrection testified to our 
acceptance, I submit to you that this 
Christianity of ours is a delusion ; we are 
not His flock, nor the sheep of His 
pasture. It is by His Death that He 
has purchased us, by His Resurrection 
that the purchase is declared complete 
and the Surety released ; it is by bring- 
ing again from the dead the great 



THE GEEAT SHEPHERD. 61 

Shepherd of the sheep, that God hath 
become to us the God of peace. 

I have spoken to-day entirely of that 
which our Shepherd is to each of us in 
His own person : of what He is, rather 
than of that which He does, in His 
pastoral office : of what we are to believe 
of Him, rather than of that which we are 
to seek in Him. The wants and weak- 
ness of our various characters, and how 
they may be supplied and strengthened 
by the having Him for our Shepherd, — 
this, the larger and more varied portion 
of our subject, yet remains. 

May God prepare us for the fitting 
consideration of it, by impressing on us, 
and carrying into our hearts, that which 
we have already heard. 



III. 

2Tf)trtr Stmtiajj after faster, 

THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEER 

i ■ My sheep hear my voice, and I 
know them, and they follow 
me : and I give unto them 
eternal life ; and they shall 
never perish, neither shall 
any man pluck them out of 
my hand." — John x. 27,28. 

llTE considered last Sunday the 
pastoral office of our risen Lord, 
treating it mainly with reference to the 
individual Christian life. And we had 
advanced thus far. Premising that yearn- 



THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 63 

ing for reliance, guidance, sympathy, 
which is natural to all of us, we saw that 
our Shepherd is one on whom our souls 
may unreservedly lean, for He has all 
power, and wisdom, and goodness, being 
by the very terms of His declaration of 
Himself as the Good Shepherd, our Lord 
and God. We saw too, that He is one 
not infinitely removed from us, but be- 
tween whom and ourselves subsist the 
tender sympathies of our common 
humanity, being Himself man. And we 
insisted, as a result of the true doctrine of 
His incarnation, that He is not confined 
in these sympathies, or in the work that 
He has wrought for us, to the limits of 
His own personal being, for He took not 
the person of a man, but our whole man- 



64 THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 

hood, into His personal Godhead, so that 
we all have a claim and a share in Him. 
And lastly, we saw that His possession of 
us as His flock is not of mere antecedent 
right, in that He hath made us, but one 
of right resulting from a definite act of 
His, by which He hath purchased us out 
of the possession of another into His own : 
viz., His Death for our redemption. 

So far we seem to have been laying the 
foundations and setting out the great 
constituent truths, of this His office, and 
of our standing as the sheep of His 
pasture. We shall to-day be employed in 
following out some of the practical results 
of these truths, and in raising the 
building of our personal lives on those 
foundations. 



THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 65 

A preliminary remark is needed on a 
very common defect in our thoughts of 
our Blessed Lord : I mean, the confining 
them too much to the past and the future, 
to the neglect of what is present. What 
He was, and said, and did, in His mani- 
festation upon earth, cannot be too much 
studied by us, for on this depends all we 
know of Him, and on this our trust is 
grounded. What He will be in His 
future coming and our gathering together 
to Him, and completion in Him, should 
be ever kept in our view, for it is the 
substance of our hopes, the fruit of our 
labours, the consolation of our disappoint- 
ments and sorrows. But both these, the 
thought of Him in the past, and the 
thought of Him in the future, only then 



66 THE SHEPHEED AND HIS SHEEP. 

become real powers influencing our hearts 
and lives, when they are bound together, 
and animated, by regard to Him as He is 
in the present. If this be, as so often it 
is, omitted, our knowledge of Him is con- 
fined to the region of speculation, and 
does not spread into that of action. What 
He is to us now, where He is now, what 
He is at this moment doing, what we 
ought to be doing and feeling towards 
Him, in the present, and as present, these 
are the really profitable inquiries for the 
Christian man, and without these in some 
measure subsisting, we cannot be, in any 
worthy sense, His disciples. Happy is he, 
whose current conception of the world and 
all that is therein, is never without Him in 
whom the universe is gathered together, 






THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 67 

and by whom all tilings consist ; lie in 
whose inward world of passing ideas and 
images shaped by thought, sits ever su- 
preme that human glorified Form, which 
in some blessed place even now shares the 
throne of the Father. For that man best 
enters into, that man only in truth makes 
real to himself, the fact on which we would 
dwell first to-day, that this good Shepherd 
is ever present with His flock, and with 
every member of it. " Lo I am with you 
alway, all the days, even until the con- 
summation of the world/' The particular 
method of this presence should, of course, 
come into consideration in its place : but 
meantime we all should be infinite gainers 
in our inward lives by accepting the say- 
ing in its simplicity as He uttered it ; 



68 THE SHEPHEKD AND HIS SHEEP. 

that, be the manner and method what 
it may, He, He Himself, is ever present : 
the Shepherd, always with His flock. 
" Where two or three are gathered 
in His name, there is He in the midst 
of them/' When we seek our soli- 
tude, we escape not from Him ; when 
we walk by the way, He is our com- 
panion ; ever standing by, ever looking 
into our face with His, approvingly, re- 
proachingly, as we in thought, in word, 
in deed, confess Him or deny Him. But 
more, far more. He is not a mute inactive 
witness, as He stands by us, as He walks 
with us ; He is our ever present Shepherd : 
tending us, feeding us, reclaiming us ; not 
there to be ministered unto, but to 
minister. Blessed are they who hourly 



THE SHEPHERD AXD HIS SHEEP. 69 

look for His ministrations : blessed, who 
in the haunts of men, and in the secret 
chamber, listen for His gentle whisper, rise 
up and sit down at His reminding touch, 
feed upon Him by faith in His abiding 
Sacrifice, go out and come in with Him 
to lead them. 

And thus we pass to our main subject: 
the acts of the Good Shepherd in His 
present dealing with the individual soul ; 
and the attitude of the soul towards her 
Shepherd. These are summed up for us 
by Himself in my text, but have been 
given now in detail in the discourse of 
which these words form the close. 

The most comprehensive of these His 
acts is, guiding. "My sheep hear my 
voice, and I know them, and they follow 



70 THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 

* 

me." They hear His voice. But what 
has that voice uttered ? How has it 
addressed them ? " He calleth His sheep 
by name." " By name." The name of 
each one of us is, when we come to think 
of it, a strange and mysterious thing. 
One of those words which we hear the 
oftenest, but which carries us into the 
depth of our personality. By its utter- 
ance, we grasp the very person himself. 
" Jesus stood and said, Mary. She an- 
swered to Him, Rabboni." If with any 
of you, in the midst of carelessness or 
dissipation, of the pouring forth of un- 
hallowed words, or the revelling in for- 
bidden thoughts, a soft voice from the 
home fireside were to whisper the accus- 
tomed name, how would sin start up as 



THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 71 

at the touch of the spear-point; how 
would the gentle waters of affection re- 
turn and murmur again over their bed 
which the waster had scorched ! And 
we further characterize that which is our 
closest and most personal name, — we call 
it our Christian name. Its sound tells 
us that we are His, brings with it the 
covenant in which we stand with Him : 
lets us not forget, that we are sheep of His 
pasture. Observe how this individual- 
izes His regard for His flock : how again 
it puts each of us into a relation with 
Him of intimate knowledge, and as it 
were daily and hourly love. He calls us, 
as a mother calls her child : as a man 
calls his friend. He has a voice which 
cannot be mistaken by any one of 



72 THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 

us : a voice whose sound tells of our 
own character and of our own wants : 
a tone of love stirring our love in 
return. 

And what says this voice to every one 
of us, my brethren ? When we hear 
our own name pronounced, when we can- 
not but turn and look, when the attitude 
of our souls is, " Speak, Lord, for thy 
servant heareth," what command has He 
for each of us ? Simply this, " Follow 
Me." " He goeth before, and the sheep 
follow Him, for they know His voice." 
Very various are our paths in life ; but 
in front of every one of His sheep is the 
Shepherd, leading the way. Is our life 
active business, unremitting study, self- 
denying obedience ? He goeth before. 



THE SHEPHEKD AXD HIS SHEEP. 73 

Thirty unobserved years were spent by 
Him in diligent subjection to ordinary 
duties. Follow Him. Is it patient suf- 
fering 1 Behold Him on the road, bow- 
ing under His cross. Is it to bear neg- 
lect and scorn ; to endure being under- 
valued and set aside ? See, where the 
proud and self-asserting are thronging 
thickest, a tender plant springing up, 
crushed and trodden by their feet : that 
is He ; be thou content to be as He 
was. Is thy lot, to wait patiently the 
hour of dismissal, — earth receding and 
fading away, — eternity closer and larger 
each hour \ Look up, and thou shalt still 
see the well-known Form passing into 
the dark valley before thee. The same 
words, "Follow Me," have ten thousand 



74 THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 

varying tones, according as they are 
spoken to the varieties of human charac- 
ter and calling. The sheep follow Him ; 
for they know His voice. 

And this going before them is not 
for encouragement only ; it is also for 
guidance : for pointing out to us, and 
conducting us to, the green pastures and 
the waters of comfort : for teaching us 
what to seek and what to avoid. But 
we need wisdom, and trust, and patience, 
to discriminate, and to lean upon, and to 
wait for, this guidance of our Shepherd. 
For though it is ever present, we do not 
always perceive it : though it is unerring, 
we do not always trust it : though it is 
never delayed beyond its time, we are 
not disposed always to be patient till 



THE SHEPHEED AND HIS SHEEP. 75 

it is vouchsafed. " My sheep hear my 
voice/' So they do, in the main, and 
when they bethink themselves, and when 
they are faithful to Him, and when they 
are listening for Him : but very often in 
our course we forget ourselves, and our 
ears are inattentive, and we are unfaith- 
ful, and listening for any voice rather 
than His guiding call. And then we 
mistake the deceiver s voice for His : or 
He speaks, and we perceive it not, and 
rise not up to follow. His guidance 
again may not come exactly when, nor 
exactly as, we expect it. In our weak- 
ness, we may then feel most bewildered, 
when we are going safest and surest. 
It is not always a straight nor an easy 
path along which our Shepherd leads 



76 THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 

us. Our feet may be cut by the rocks, 
our limbs may be torn by the brambles : 
His were, who goes before us : and why 
should we think it strange ? But we do 
think it strange : and often, when closest 
to His guiding hand, if we become weary, 
or if obstacles meet us, or if the path 
take unexpected turns, we fancy our- 
selves abandoned, and His guidance with- 
drawn. And there are errors the other 
way also. Many an one of Christ's flock 
has believed himself to be under His 
special guidance, when he was not so : 
has gone out of the way, and fallen into 
mischief, for want of better discerning 
the signs of the Shepherd's presence. 

Nor again does He always guide us 
as we expected. We lay down rules 



THE SHEPHEED AND HIS SHEEP. Ti 

for His action : but His ways are not 
our ways. We expect Him ever to be 
seen in the direction where we are look- 
ing, to be heard in the quarter to which 
our ear is directed. But where would 
be our growth and ripening in wis- 
dom, if we were never left to learn the 
way for ourselves ? There are circum- 
stances, where no apparent guidance is 
the very best guidance. And He knows 
when these occur, and guides us, but 
not as we expect. And thus His voice 
oftentimes speaks under disguise, and we 
are in danger of missing it. When we 
stray from Him and He would guide 
us back, He does not always meet us 
in His own person, nor speak in His 
own tone. There is for us no special 



78 THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 

recognition of Him : no "Domine quo 
vadis" encountering of Him. Some 
casual sound penetrated thy soul and 
raised questioning : some wayside sight 
recalled thy better thoughts : some faith- 
ful word of a friend, or some malicious 
word of a foe, made thee for a moment 
to stand and ponder : some pictured in- 
cident, or some book in a street window, 
threw a flitting line of change across 
thy thoughts : it was the Lord : it was 
thy Shepherd guiding thee, not as thou 
lookedst for Him, but none the less 
certainly, none the less safely. Blessed 
are they who, in life's difficulties and 
life's temptations, are patient to listen for 
His guidance, wise to discern His voice ; 
who have the energy to arise when He 



THE SHEPHEKD AXD HIS SHEEP. 79 

calls, and the endurance to follow whither- 
soever He goeth. 

Again; this going before His sheep is 
not only for example, not only for guid- 
ance, but also for defence. Our Shep- 
herd is our Captain. He guides us into 
our promised pastures : but He goes 
before us armed. The perils of the 
wilderness pastures w^ere in His mind 
when He said of His sheep, "They 
shall never perish, neither shall any 
pluck them out of mine hand." What- 
ever dangers, whatever enemies beset 
each of us, He is sufficient for all. Day 
by day He is fighting for us. We know 

not how often His arm protects us. We 

ft 

attribute to our own strength deliver- 
ances which He alone has wrought. All 



80 THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 

our weak points are open to Him : at 
each of them He sets His watch, though 
we may relax our vigilance : and He 
takes care to remind us of them, though 
in our self-confidence we may forget 
them. 

But here again let us take good heed, 
that we understand well against what 
enemies He defends us. It is part of our 
weakness, to mistake friends for foes, and 
foes for friends. Only the unerring eye of 
our Shepherd can discern the one from 
the other. Our sight is perverted by self- 
interest and earthly passions. We think it 
hard that we are not allowed to embrace 
the very weapons of the enemy, and we 
fret and chafe at the faithful words of 
our best friends. Against tribulations, 



THE SHEPHERD AXD HIS SHEEP. 81 

against crosses, against bereavements, thy 
Shepherd and Captain will not defend 
thee. For these are not thine enemies : 
these are his messengers : the drawings of 
His crook, and the admonitions of His rod. 
It will be often against prosperity, against 
ease and comfort, against self-reliance, 
against thine own good opinion, against 
the praise and honour that come from 
men, that thy Shepherd will rise up and 
defend thee. When all seems smoothest, 
when thou hast achieved thy success, 
when thou hast entered into thy Paradise, 
and walkest up and down in thy Babylon, 
then shall come a blow, whence thou least 
expected it, from a hand unrevealed to 
thee. Be not terrified : it was not dealt 
on thee, but for thee ; not by one coming 

G 



82 THE SHEPHEKD AND HIS SHEEP. 

against thee, but by one who fights by 
thy side. The crash that carried thee to 
the ground with it, was not thy ruin, but 
the enemy's : was the shivering of the 
sword which was lifted against thee, the 
snapping of the chain which the foe was 
casting round thee. Look up — the sky is 
clear, and thou art free. We load our- 
selves with things which are not for our 
good, and gird on us unproved armour 
and fancy that our bane is our treasure : 
but He knows what is the real immortal 
gem within us, — how much of us is His, 
and will endure unto the end : and that 
it is which He preserves, and fences about, 
and keeps as the apple of His eye. All else 
in his sight is cumbrous and superfluous : 
and therefore, in his defence of us, He 



THE SHEPHERD AXD HIS SHEEP. 83 

strips us down to our real selves : pulls off 
all the untried armour, all the tinsel which 
we have fastened on : leaves us alone, yet 
not alone, — for He is with us, and under 
us are His everlasting arms. 

And on the other hand, who shall deny, 
that there are times when there can be 
no mistaking the enemy, — when the 
battle rages fiercely, — when we and our 
soul's adversaries are standing foot to 
foot, and our strength fails, because the 
foe is too much for us % Times when not 
temper only but faith itself is tried ! 
when not our comfort, but our life is in 
danger : not our good report, but His 
holy name is imperilled ? Here again, let 
us not be mistaken. If He permits such 
assaults, it is not because He has aban- 



84 THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 

doned our defence, but because He 
knows best how to conduct it. If He is 
a Captain, He must have soldiers. By 
these passages of arms, He is training us ; 
He is proving our part in Him, He is 
preparing us for triumph and honour. He 
• knows how much we can bear, and when 
to lift His arm in our behalf. 

Then again, besides guiding, besides 
defending, He governs His flock. He is 
our Master whom we serve ; our King 
whom we obey. In the heart of each one 
of His flock is the inquiry ever being made, 
" What saith my Lord 2 " And in this 
matter of seeking out and doing His will, 
we are perhaps in more danger of care- 
lessness and forgetfulness at a time, and 
in a land, where His words have become 



THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 85 

the rules and maxims of Christian public 
opinion, than we should have been, where 
those words were as vet scorned and 
laughed at. When His voice rang loud 
and clear in men's consciences as a testi- 
mony against prevalent moral abomina- 
tions, the appeal to His laws as King of His 
people was more direct and obvious than it 
is now. Are we to some extent living in 
purity and peace \ We are in danger of 
ascribing it to mere human progress, and 
leaving Him out. And thus we become 
careless about obeying Him in cases where 
the world still knows Him not, — cases 
where He has commanded things with 
which it has no sympathy, or forbidden 
what it still practises. AVe, who are the 
sheep of His pasture, should remember, 



86 THE SHEPHEED AND HIS SHEET. 

that all human progress is measured simply 
by how best men obey Him : morality 
advances, in proportion as His pure words 
are observed : science advances, in pro- 
portion as men search after God aright, 
in proportion as they are patient and 
diligent, and fearless and true, after the 
example and command of Him who is 
Truth itself. We shall then be in the 
central line of true human progress, when 
we are found in the way of His command- 
ments. 

There is one remaining particular in 
the Good Shepherd's declaration of Him- 
self, and dealing with His flock, coming 
closer perhaps to the individual heart 
than any yet considered. " I know them." 
Not one of them escapes His notice or 



THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 87 

His remembrance. Not only does He 

■ 

know them in the sense of the words, " the 
Lord knoweth them that are His;' but 
their whole being in all its depths lies 
open to Him. " I know my sheep and 
am known of mine, even as the Father 
knoweth me and I am known of the 
Father/' It is ever a drawback to our 
trust and reliance in any fellow- creature, 
that we are not and cannot be thoroughly 
known. However close the accord, how- 
ever warm the sympathy, still in some 
measure the heart is a fountain closed, 
a garden sealed. And all through 
our wider intercourse with mankind 
prevails the fear of being misunder- 
stood ; of having wrong motives as- 
cribed to us ; of our disinterestedness 



88 THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 

being read as intrigue, kindness as self- 
seeking, clear conscience as hypocrisy. 
But in our inward dealings with our 
Shepherd, we have the strong consola- 
tion that all such apprehension is abso- 
lutely precluded. It is a charm, and if 
I may so say, a luxury of the intercourse 
of the soul with Him, that while of its 
weaknesses and sins none can be held 
back or concealed, all its truth, and love, 
and tenderness, and generous emotions 
may be taken for granted, and, though 
humbly, yet boldly asserted. " Lord, 
Thou knowest all things : Thou knowest 
that I love Thee." And it adds to this 
entireness of confidence, when we reflect 
that He who now thus knows us, shall 
one day in the fulness of this knowledge, 



THE SHEPHERD AXD HIS SHEEP. 89 

judge us ; that He who has guided and 
defended and ruled us, shall also appor- 
tion our final doom. For thus our trust 
is one and unbroken throughout time 
and eternity : is unbounded as His power, 
unlimited as His knowledge, uncon- 
strained as His love. 

Compare for one moment, for I know 
not how better to conclude our medita- 
tions on our Good Shepherd, the recent 
language of one who was formerly among 
ourselves, but now from other and less 
pure pastures vainly calls to us to join 
him.* Maintaining, strange to say, that 
mans confidence in the Mother of our 
Lord may be greater and more unre- 
served than that reposed on our Lord 
# Newman, Letter to Dr. Pusey on his " Eirenicon." 



90 THE SHEPHERD AND HIS SHEEP. 

Himself, " We look to her," he writes, 
" without any fear, any remorse, any con- 
sciousness that she is able to read us, 
judge us, punish us." 

O vain and limited confidence ! 
treacherous and unworthy reliance! 
rash and suicidal confession ! For does 
not every word here supply its own refu- 
tation in the fulness and blessedness of 
our trust in our Divine Shepherd, and 
in none beside Him ? 

We look to Him, it is true, with fear : 
but with that fear, which should ever 
temper unreserved reliance ; and with 
fear out of which He hath taken the 
terror ; fear which keeps us mindful that 
our Shepherd is our God. We look to 
Him with remorse, it is true : but the 



THE SHEPHEED AXD HIS SHEEP. 91 

fountain opened on His Cross has turned 
its knawing bitterness into the whole- 
some tears of loving penitence : we 
look to Him with, and because of, con- 
sciousness that He is able to read us : 
that there is no bar between our souls 
and Him : that His infinite compassion 
only is the measure of His infinite 
knowledge. We look to Him the more 
earnestly, the more lovingly, because we 
believe that He shall come to be our 
Judge, He who has led us, and fed us 
with Himself, and fought for us with 
His sheltering hand : and finally we look 
to Him though He is able to punish us, 
without dread of that His power • for 
" there is no condemnation to them that 
are in Christ Jesus" 



IV. 

JFourtfj Stmtias after faster. 

EXPEDIENCY OF THE LOKD's REMOVAL. 

" It is expedient for you that I 
go away: for if I go not 
away, the Comforter will 
not come unto you." — 
John xvi. 7. 

TTTHILE insisting last Sunday on the 
importance of accepting as a simple 
truth the constant presence of the Good 
Shepherd with His flock, I observed, that 
the particular method of this presence 
must of course come into consideration in 



THE LOED S REMOVAL. 



its order. And as we are now approach- 
ing the Festival of the Ascension, it will 
not be out of place to inquire into this 
matter, and so to prepare our minds for 
rightly celebrating that joyful commemo- 
ration. 

Our blessed Lord came upon earth, and 
suffered, and triumphed, that He might 
prepare to Himself and for His glory a 
flock whom He was to lead, and defend, 
and govern. It now appears (for we are 
fully justified in interpreting His pur- 
poses by the light of experience and 
history) that He intended this His flock 
to continue many centuries in the state 
of trial before He should come to take it 
to Himself. And as regards His imme- 
diate disciples whom He left behind 



94 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

Him, it appears to have been His inten- 
tion not only that an entire change 
should take place in their thoughts of 
Him and of themselves, but that by 
means of them should be begun a far 
greater change, to be wrought on the 
entire mass of mankind ; gradual in- 
deed and imperceptible in its progress, 
but working onward until it embraced 
all within its operation. And this change 
was to advance according to the laws 
of the spirit of man which was to be 
influenced by it. Not by might, not by 
power, not by external force of any kind, 
but, so to speak, taking its chance in the 
crowd of influences ; trusting to persua- 
sion, winning its way by gaining mens 
hearts ; content to be opposed, baffled, 



lord's removal. 95 

put down, then springing up through the 
gates of its prison, twining round and 
concealing the very obstacles which 
barred its path : still in its main and 
most successful careeer, unseen, unboasted 
of; then surest to be corrupted when 
made the vaunt or the rallying-cry of 
men, then certain to become firm and 
fresh and vigorous when despised and 
persecuted and put down. And if in the 
long course of the ages, this influence 
needed men for its fellow- workers, and 
the pulses of human hearts to carry on 
its great harmonies from generation to 
generation, they were those of the deeper 
and quieter kind, of whom the world hears 
not, or hears but seldom. Just as in the 
outskirts of the grove in spring the shade 



96 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

is restless and dazzling, and the odours 
are scattered, and the songs of the birds 
come fitfully on the ear, because the 
winds are lashing the plains ; but in the 
deep recesses of the forest, the shadows 
are massed in calm, and the odours lie 
about us as a dream, and the nightin- 
gale's song sounds like the power that 
hushes the breeze, and the heart com- 
munes with nature and is still : even so 
is it with the trees of the garden where 
the Lord God walketh. Still and deep 
are the retreats in man's spirit where 
He possesses all by His presence. Men 
vaunt before the world, but He is not in 
their hearts : men lift the arm in zeal, 
but the sword of the Lord deals not the 
stroke : men run to and fro and fret them- 



lord's removal. 97 

selves, but their wrath worketh not His 
righteousness. Clamour, and controversy, 
and excitement, ravel out the web of His 
seamless garment, ruffle the wings of 
His sweet messengers of peace, wreck the 
odours from the fields of heaven on their 
way to us. Not by rapid and visible 
courses, not by world-famed and blazoned 
victories, not mainly by decisions of courts 
and decrees of councils, have the churches 
grown in grace, and the flock in know- 
ledge of its Shepherd ; but by centuries 
of living experience and loving sacrifice, 
by the blessed testimonies of despised 
lives and unknown deaths, by the accu- 
mulating force of irresistible persuasion, 
the hollowing of the great rock by the 
— gentle rain from heaven. The matters 

H 



98 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

that men boast of, they it is that fall 
away, that perish, that pass out of mind : 
the matters that God conceals, they it 
is that grow onward, that endure, that 
shall be had in everlasting remem- 
brance. 

"It is expedient for you that I go 
away." His bodily presence in the flesh 
was necessary for them, for us. But as 
long as He was with them in the flesh, 
man talking with man, it was a dispen- 
sation of sense, and not of spirit. Eye 
reflected eye, mouth spoke to mouth, 
hand was laid upon hand ; and such in- 
ward emotions as the evidence of the 
senses generates at its highest and best, 
these were doubtless theirs : but the 
Lord Himself, the Lord God, He that was 



lord's removal. 99 

begotten of God from eternity, touched 
them not, till He was ascended to His 
Father and their Father, and His God 
and their God. There was no contact 
of spirit with spirit : and when you and 
I kneel in our chambers and call in our 
thoughts after the turmoil of the day, 
and the sweet sense of His presence 
spreads over our souls like balm over the 
pangs of a wound, and our spirit speaks 
and His Spirit answers, we have nearer 
communion with Him than the multi- 
tude that thronged Him of old, — nearer 
than the Twelve who were His friends, — 
nearer than that one of the Twelve, who 
lay upon His breast, and whispered to 
Him. None of the great events of His 
course and of our redemption drew down 



100 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

what the lispiog prayer of a Christian 
child can draw down now. The sun hid 
his face when the cross was lifted on 
Calvary, and the earth trembled ; but 
the Spirit was not in the darkness — the 
Comforter came not in the earthquake. 
The raiment of angels gleamed round 
about Jerusalem on the resurrection 
morning, and the Lord looked forth once 
and again from the hiding-place of His 
majesty : but the Spirit came not with 
the Resurrection : the Comforter entered 
not at the closed doors when He stood in 
the midst of them. Gradually, as the 
Lord withdrew, like tint on tint when 
the glorious sun is departing, came forth 
the blessed influence : then hearts began 
to burn as He talked by the way, and 



lokd's removal. 101 

understandings opened and took in the 
things concerning the kingdom of God, 
and the preliminary earnest and symbol 
of the Spirit was breathed on them in a 
stream of life by His breath. Would 
we know what those forty days wrought ? 
At the beginning of them, because He 
announced His departure, sorrow filled 
the disciples' heart : at the end of them, 
when they had seen the cloud receive 
Him out of their sight, they returned 
to Jerusalem with great joy, and were in 
the temple, blessing and praising God. 
What new seeds of knowledge, what 
fresh springs of love, what forgetfulness 
of themselves, what concentration of 
thought and feeling upon Him, must 
have supervened ! 



102 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

And on another account it was best 
that He should be withdrawn. By 
human agency, visible and palpable, it 
was the will of the Lord to spread 
the knowledge of Himself and the 
faith over the world ; by the feeble- 
ness of human energy, by the foolishness 
of human preaching. Not the voice that 
stilled the waves, not the voice that 
called Lazarus out of his tomb, not the 
voice whose confession of Himself struck 
the adversaries to the ground, was to 
wrangle with the contradictors in the 
synagogues, and argue down the blas- 
phemers in the market-places ; but those 
faltering voices that cried " Save Lord, 
we perish ;" that voice of one who thrice 
called out "I know not the man :" the 



lord's removal. 103 

voice of another, whose bodily presence 
was weak and his speech contemptible : 
not a preacher of whom it should be 
said, " Never man spake like this man," 
but one of whom men should question, 
" What will this babbler say ?" And, my 
brethren, we may carry on this thought 
yet further. The religion which was first 
grounded on things seen and heard, the 
religion whose early struggles were 
helped by vision and voice divine, must 
yet, for its progress and the perfection 
of its work, be thoroughly weaned from 
things seen and heard : must learn to look 
for no vision, to listen for no oracle from 
above. If Spirit is to speak to spirit, if 
God is to dwell with man, then it must 
be no still lingering sign from the glori- 



104 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

fied Person of the Redeemer, which must 
either summon, or retain, or encourage, or 
perfect, the sheep of His flock : no appa- 
rition of Himself, no manifest token of 
His will, must stand between our spirit 
and His Spirit : He will not have us super- 
stitious, He will not have us decoyed by 
sense, He will not have our thoughts in- 
tent on His accidents, but on His sub- 
stance. And therefore as years went on, 
and the faith in Him became established, 
His Spirit left off to work by outward gifts 
in apostles and holy men; He called in His 
provisional forces, and set up His assured 
and final reign in the hearts of mankind. 
It was no longer the shadow of Peter 
passing by, but the stirring up by Peter 
of the pure minds by way of remem- 



lord's removal. 105 

brance ; no longer handkerchiefs from 
the body of Paul, but his beseeching by 
the meekness and gentleness of Christ. 
And thus it was expedient for us 
that He should entirely go away : that 
not only He himself should be with- 
drawn, but also those who had seen 
Him, and those that wrought miracles 
in His name : expedient, that the Church 
which had known Christ after the flesh, 
should know Him so no longer : that 
every tint of that glory, which rose over 
the pastures of Bethlehem, should fade 
away behind the brow of the Mount 
of Olives : that the Lord, and His glit- 
tering retinue, should pass into the 
cloud, and be received out of our sight, 
— and the disciples of the Lord through 



106 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

all the ages should walk not by sense 
but by faith. 

And if it was thus expedient that He 
should be removed away, and that the 
work He did among us should be left so 
to speak in charge of another, another to 
strengthen and teach and console us, let 
us not lose the lesson which this would 
teach us, nor be slow to perceive its bear- 
ing on the time in which our lot is cast. 
He is gone from us, and with Him the 
whole class of influences are gone 
which He exerted when present and 
as present, and have given place to 
others. The eternal verities which He 
uttered and lived, these indeed have not 
departed, these can never depart : once 
sown on earth, they grow, they spread, 



lord's removal. 107 

and the nations take shelter in their 
branches ; but they are described for us, 
they are not spoken to us. We have 
lost from them the sweet tone of His 
voice, the loving light of His eye, the 
winning charm of His present example. 
All that purely personal trust is gone, 
which asserted itself when Peter vaunted, 
and betrayed itself when Peter denied. 
We have passed, as we said, into a re- 
gion of higher trust, and of closer con- 
tact. Let us then at least be consis- 
tent. Let us not show ourselves un- 
worthy of our preferment by despising 
it ; by hankering after the lower state 
of sensuous evidence and manifestation. 
Hitherto, of what we have lost : and 
now let us bestow some further words 



108 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

on it, but as compared with that which 
we have gained. " If I go not away, the 
Comforter will not come unto you." The 
eye and the ear and the touch and the 
taste — through these the Comforter comes 
not : these may be His aids when present, 
but they are not His avenues of ap- 
proach ; even though the Lord Himself 
were their object. So then, this price we 
have paid for whatever privilege has been 
won for us : the withdrawal of the Lord : 
ages upon ages, and no sign of His per- 
sonal presence ; " No more talk with God 
or angel guest :" silence, and the dreary 
round of common things, and the world 
buying and selling about us, and hope 
deferred, and the scoff of the unbeliever, 
" Where is the promise of His coming V 



lord's removal. 109 

But He also said, " If I go away, I 
will send Him unto you." In the 
midst of all this apparent discourage- 
ment, the still small voice : no age with- 
out it, no age utterly disregardful of it : 
mens spirits irresistibly softened by its 
pleading whispers : the change of our 
human into His divine gradually carried 
on, even unto the end. And of all this, 
the Lord's withdrawal from among us is 
the necessary condition. 

Let us illustrate this in some of the 
chief departments of the work of the 
Comforter. And first, as to His teach- 
ing office. We are apt to think that 
no teaching could ever equal that of 
our Blessed Lord in His own per- 
son. To have seen that mild and 



110 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

gracious countenance : to have hung 
upon those lips, while the voice sweeter 
than honey distilled the clearness of 
truth : to have remembered being on 
that mount and hearing those beati- 
tudes ; to have possessed, not their beauty 
and purity only, but, as a crowning charm, 
the loving majesty of their first utter- 
ance : to have had that tale of the prodi- 
gal carried down deep into the heart by 
all the tenderest tones of Him who came 
to seek and to save that which was lost : 
what teaching could be like this 1 And 
yet let us remember that whatever the 
Lord's present teaching may have been 
in itself, it was in its effect as teaching 
necessarily compounded of the power of 
the speaker and the infirmities of the 



lord's removal. Ill 

hearer. " He that hath ears to hear, let 
him hear/' After all, if we had heard it, 
it might not have been what we expected, 
nor what would exactly have touched 
our spirits. Our weakness, our caprice, 
would have marred its effect. "Is this 
the great Teacher of mankind ? this, He 
who leads about multitudes after Him \ n 
And as matter of fact, it was so. Men 
were offended at Him, and rejected His 
teaching. And here also, He withdrew 
Himself from them by degrees. Having 
begun with open speaking, He retired 
behind the veil of the parable, and con- 
veyed holy truth in the familiar words 
of household life. And -after all, even if 
received, even if delighted in, His out- 
ward teaching could be only, so to speak, 



112 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

the material, on which inward ponder- 
ings and questionings and self-search ings, 
among which the Spirit is busy, were to 
be wrought. We have the same ma- 
terial, laid up for us in the storehouse 
of the written word : shall we murmur, 
if we possess it freed from the admixture 
of the lower and less trustworthy in- 
fluence of our capricious senses % The 
Comforter, acting through our thoughts 
and affections, takes of these things of 
Christ, and shows them to us : opening 
within us the living wells of yearning 
and sympathy, kindling light where we 
were dark : teaching, as no present out- 
ward voice, not* even Gods own voice 
dwelling in our flesh, could possibly teach 
us. 



lord's removal. 113 

Then again as to the Comforter's 
office of guidance. What guidance, we 
may be disposed to think, could have 
been like His, who could not err, nor 
lead His flock astray ? that I might 
have clung to the hem of His garment, 
might have gone away into the moun- 
tain which He appointed — might have 
followed His glorified Form about the 
world, visited with the favour of His 
chosen ones ! But after all, such guid- 
ance could be but the leading of sense. 
His glorified form partakes of the quali- 
ties and accidents of human form in 
general. It was thus that He proved 
His identity to His disciples; "Behold 
me and handle me, that it is I myself." 
It is thus that the Church lays down 



114 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

the doctrine respecting His corporeal 
presence : " It is against the truth of 
Christ's natural body to be at one time 
in more places than one." Such leading 
then would not suffice for all at all times. 
Besides, no guidance from without can 
do the Comforter s work. Watch but a 
Christian man betrayed into hard words 
and violent acts in headstrong passion. 
Approach such an one : try to lead him, 
try to dissuade him. All outward plead- 
ing but adds fuel, and serves further to 
envenom and irritate. But leave him 
to commune with his thoughts — in other 
words, let the inward guidings of the 
blessed Comforter have space to whisper 
within him, and you shall see sober- 
mindedness and gentleness return, and 



lokd's removal. 115 

shall hear the wholesome words of regret 
and penitence. 

But here, as ever in dealing with this 
subject, care must be taken that in our 
very maintaining of an inward guidance 
we be not inconsistent with ourselves. 
They who hold inward guidance, and 
wait for it to be made manifest to them, 
are making inward into outward. If 
the Lord is to speak sensibly within us, 
the Lord is not gone away, the Com- 
forter is not come. In all I have before 
said of the Shepherd calling His sheep 
by name, in all that I have said of their 
hearing His word and following Him, 
there has been no such meaning as this, 
nay rather the negative of any such 
meaning, and caution against being mis- 



116 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

led by it. The more we are under di- 
vine guidance, the more we are changed 
into the divine image, the less notably 
marked, the less prepense, the more 
natural and spontaneous, will be our 
following of Christ and our guidance 
by the Comforter. Saul, blinded by 
the dazzling glow of the Lord's pre- 
sence on the hostile errand to Damascus, 
differed not more from Paul exclaiming, 
" It is not I, but Christ that liveth in 
me/' than one who waits for visible and 
sensible manifestation of divine guidance 
differs from the humble and sober- 
minded Christian, living his ordinary 
life and thinking his ordinary thoughts 
in the light of Christ's love, and under 
the teaching of the Blessed Comforter. 



117 



Then again, the Comforter could not 
have performed His work of consolation, 
if Christ had not gone away. For con- 
solation to have place, the need of con- 
solation must be felt. Many a man 
says, "It is good for us to be here/' 
not knowing what he is saying. While 
the disciples had the Lord with them, 
they were disposed to rest in a lower 
and unworthy kind of contentment, from 
which they needed to be weaned, and 
taught their need of higher and more 
blessed contentment. During the time 
of His bodily presence among them, their 
state was of necessity imperfect and un- 
developed : their true wants were as 
yet unknown ; their deepest need of a 
Comforter was as yet unrevealed to 



118 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

them. There wanted sorrow, and be- 
reavement, and conflict, and disappoint- 
ment, and persecution, to raise them step 
by step into the thirst for and apprecia- 
tion of the consolations of the Comforter. 
That state of which the poet sings, — 

" A soul by force of sorrows high 
Uplifted to the purest sky 
Of undisturbed humanity," — 

they had to win for themselves by 
passing through much tribulation. And 
the Lord's bodily presence operated as 
a barrier against and absolutely pre- 
vented such elevation, by means of the 
need of consolation, into the blessed- 
ness of consolation. " Can the children 
of the bridechamber mourn, as long 
as the bridegroom is with them? But 
the days will come when the Bride- 



loed's eemoval. 119 

groom shall be taken from them, and 
then shall they mourn in those days." 

And we may confirm these views by 
consideration of the general analogy 
of God's dealings with us. Every good 
and every perfect gift is from Him : is 
in its place and degree, though those 
may not be the highest, the bestowal of 
His good Spirit, the Comforter. What 
is His method in these every-day 
bestowals, these acquirements and en- 
joyments common to us all ? Is it not 
evermore this, that they are rather the 
after results, than the present effects 
of impressions made on us through the 
senses 1 It is not in the presence of na- 
tural beauty, not when we stand before 
exquisite works of art, not when we hear 



120 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

of noble examples of virtue, that the soul 
lays up her stores of knowledge, and of 
pleasure, and of high ambition to go and 
do likewise. The teaching does not 
come till the sense has ceased to be 
affected, and the mind returns upon 
itself in solitude. Its best thoughts 
and words and resolves accrue to it not 
in the dust and glare of life, but amidst 
the silent dews, and under the pure 
star of evening. God deals with us 
face to face, and brings us through con- 
flict, and wearies us with active duty, 
and then His hand is withdrawn, and 
we sit alone, and His Spirit begins to 
plead within us. And so doubtless it 
will be, my brethren, not only with this 
and that thing in our lives, but with all 



lord's removal. 121 

our life collected up into one. How 
many have said that, when death has 
been expected, all past time appeared 
gathered up into an instant. Why was 
this, but because it seemed to have come 
to an end, and the spirit began to con- 
template it at a distance 1 And will 
this be less so when it is really at an 
end ? Will it not be then first that the 
Divine Spirit will pour back light over 
all its dark places, and meaning into all 
its unfathomable enigmas ? And is it 
not true here also, that unless the teach- 
ing of sense, and the actuality of Gods 
•dealings with us, be withdrawn, the Com- 
forter will not come to us — at least in 
His most intimate fulness and His most 
glorious power? 



122 EXPEDIENCY OF THE 

The sum of all is. that our Blessed 
Lord, by His withdrawal from us, has in 
fact fulfilled the indispensable condition 
for that to be granted us, to confer 
which on the sons of men He was born, 
and lived, and died, — even the indwelling 
influence of God's Holy Spirit. We are 
not left alone : we are not forgotten : we 
are not thought unworthy of privileges 
which the first ages of the Gospel pos- 
sessed : but God hath reserved a better 
thing for us, that they without us should 
not be made perfect. We are in the 
broad path of God's providential dealings 
with His people : taught, guided, and 
consoled by that Spirit, of whom our 
Master told us that, unless He went away, 
the Comforter would not come unto us. 



lord's removal. 123 

I have thus endeavoured, my brethren, 
to use my allotted time in this place 
in speaking to you, not of matters of 
present controversy or distracting out- 
ward interest, but rather of those that 
concern the individual Christian life ; — 
the reality for us of the Lord's resurrec- 
tion, — the relation to us of the Shepherd 
of our souls, — the expediency of our pre- 
sent state of widowhood from His glori- 
fied presence. It was hardly possible but 
that my words must have tended to 
remind you of some matters now at issue. 
We are not unacquainted in these days 
with some who deny that there is or ever 
was a Resurrection : we know something 
of a view of Christianity which tells only 
of an example in the past, and acknow- 



124 THE loed's eemoval. 

ledges not a present glorified Saviour 
and Shepherd of His people : and we too 
are called upon to listen to men who 
would bring us back to a sensuous wor- 
ship and a corporeal presence, in virtual 
denial of the work of that Comforter, 
who, unless these be withdrawn, cannot 
come to us. 

May the words which have been 
spoken mainly in direct exposition of the 
matters treated, act also as warnings to 
preserve the unwary from error, and the 
unstable from being shaken in the faith. 



J. AND W. RIDER, PRINTERS, LONDON. 



Logoff, 1866. 



A LIST OF BOOKS 



PUBLISHED BY 



ALEXANDER STEAHAN. 



§00ks loparittg. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED: 
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND JOHN STUART MILL. 

(Keprinted, with additions, from the <c Contemporary Review.") 

By the Eev. HENKY LONGUEYILLE MANSEL, B.D., 

Waynflete Professor of Philosophy, Oxford. 

Post 8vo. 



LIVES OF INDIAN OFFICERS; 

FORMING A BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF THE CIVIL 
AND MILITARY SERVICES. 

By JOHN W. KAYE, 
Author of " The Life of Lord Metcalfe," &c. 

In Two Volumes. Demy 8vo. 

K 



LIST OF BOOKS 



THE PROPHET JONAH; 
HIS CHARACTER AND MISSION TO NINEVEH. 

By the Rev. HUGH MARTIN, M.A. 

Crown 8vo. 



LONDON POEMS. 

By ROBERT BUCHANAN, 
Author of " Idyls and Legends of Inverburn." 

Small 8vo. 



THE REIGN OF LAW. 

ESSAYS. 

By the DUKE OF ARGYLL. 

Post 8vo. 



VIGNETTES: 
TWELVE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 

By BESSIE RAYNER PARKES, 
Author of " Essays on Woman's Work." 

Crown 8vo. 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDER STKAHAN. 



THE CRITICAL ENGLISH TESTAMENT 

BEING AX ADAPTATION OF BEXGEL's GNOMON, WITH NUMEROUS 

NOTES, SHOWING THE PRECISE RESULTS OF MODERN 

CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS. 

Edited by Eev. TV. L. BEACKLEY. ALA.,, and Eev. JAMES 
HAWES, M.A. 



Vol. IE — Ebe Act? and the Pastoral Epistles. 
Vol. III. — The other Epistles and the Apocalypse. 

%* Volume I. , containing the Gospels, is now ready. 75^ pa^es, crown Svo. 



TRAVELS IN THE SLAVONIC PROVINCES OF 
TURKEY IN EUROPE. 

By G. AiriR MACKENZIE axd A. P. IEBY. 

Demv Svo. "With Illustrations. 



THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS. 

By MATTHETT BEOVT^E. 

Crown Svo., 6s. 



DOCTOR AUSTIN'S GUESTS. 

By nVILLLAAI GILBEET, 
Author of "De Profundis,'' &c. 

Two Volumes. Post 8vo. 



LIST OF BOOKS 



THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 
By EMILY DAVIES. 

Small 8vo. 



DAYS OF YORE. 
By SARAH TYTLER. 

Two Volumes. Post 8vo. 



HYMNS AND HYMN WRITERS OF GERMANY. 

By W. FLEMING STEVENSON. 

Two Volumes. 



ESSAYS. 

By DORA GREENWELL, 

Author of "The Patience of Hope." 
Crown 8vo. 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDER STRAHAN. 5 

FAMILIAR LECTURES ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS. 

By SIR JOHN F. W. HERSCHEL, Baet. 

Crown 8vOj 6s. 



WEALTH AND WELFARE. 
By JEREMIAH GOTTHELF. 

Two Volumes. Post 8vo. 



THE TREASURE-BOOK OF DEVOTIONAL READING. 
Edited by BENJAMIN ORME, M.A., 

Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 



ARNE; 

A SKETCH OF NORWEGIAN PEASANT-LIFE. 

By BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON. 

Translated by Augusta Plesneb and Susan Rugelet-Powees. 
Post Svo. 



LIST OF BOOKS 



WOEKS BY HEKRY ALFOBD, D.D., 

DEAN OF CANTERBURY. 



I. 

In a few days will be published, small Svo., 3s. 6d., 

HOW TO STUDY THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

Vol. I. — The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. 

II. 
Small 8vo., 3s. 6d\, 

EASTERTIDE SERMONS. 

Preached, before the University of Cambridge on four Sundays after 
Easter, 1666. 

III. 
Nearly ready, in small Svo., 

THE YEAR' OF PRAYER; 

BEING FAMILY P11ATERS FOE THE CHRISTIAN" YEAE. 

This Book consists of Two Parts: — I. General Prayers for every Morning 
and Evening of the Week. II. Special Prayers for the Festivals, and for 
every Week throughout the year of the Church. An Introduction is pre- 
fixed, with Tables of Passages of Scripture selected for every Morning and 
Evening throughout the Year ; and an Aj>pendix added, containing Prayers 
for Special and Family Occasions. 

IT. 
In the press, 

THE YEAR OF PRAISE; 

Being Hymns, with Tunes, for the Sundays and Holidays of the Year, 
intended for use in Canterbury Cathedral, and adapted for Cathedral and 
Parish Churches generally. 

Edited by Henry Alfobd, D.D., Dean of Canterbury; 

Assisted in the Musical Part by Robert Hake, M.A., Precentor, and 

Thomas Evance Jones, Organist, of Canterbury Cathedral. 

This Book contains four Hymns for every Sunday in the Year, the first 

Hymn in each case being adapted, as anlntroit, to the special subject oi the 

Sunday. 

V. 
Tenth Thousand, small 8vo., 5s., 

THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH: 
STKAY NOTES ON SPEAKING AND SPELLING. 

YI. 

Second Edition, small 8vo., 5s., 

MEDITATIONS: 
IN ADVENT, ON CREATION, ON PROVIDENCE. 

VII. 

Fourth Edition, containing many pieces now first collected, small 8vo., 5s., 

THE POETICAL WORKS OF HENRY ALFORD. 

VIII. 
Second Edition, crown 8vo., 7s. 6d., 

LETTERS FROM ABROAD. 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDEK STKAHAN. 



WORKS BY HOEACE BUSK5TELL, D.D. 



THE VICARIOUS SACRIFICE, 
GROUNDED ON PRINCIPLES OF UNIVERSAL OBLIGATION. 

Crown Svo., 7s. 6d. 



" One of the most exhaustive and power- 
fully written works on the atonement 
which ha* been published in our day. No 
more forcible or effective attempt to set 



forth the real doctrines of the New Testa- 
ment on this central truth of the Christian 
system has ever been made."— Morning 

Star. 



CHRIST AND HIS SALVATION, 

IN SERMONS VARIOUSLY RELATED THERETO. 

Crown 8vo., 6s. 

" These sermons are distinguished from faith and feeling, but of religious genius." 
the ordinary discourses of the pulpit by — Atlantic Monthly. 
being tha product not merely of religious | 



NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 

Crown Svo., 3s. 6d. 



"We have not had in our hands, for a 
Ion? time, a book from which >o many 
beautiful and powerful passages could be 
selected The book is a remark- 
able one, and deserves to be widely known 
and read." — The British Quarterly llevieic. 

•' To thoughtful and open and candid 



minds this will be a priceless volume." — 
The Eclectic Review. 

" Though this is a great book, for such we 
deem it, it is not an obscure, still less a dull 
one. It will prove intensely interesting to 
every intelligent reader." — Scottish Congre- 
gational Magazine. 



THE NEW LIFE. 

Crown Svo., 3s. 6d. 



CHRISTIAN NURTURE, 
Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



LIST OF BOOKS 



WOKKS BY THOMAS GUTHEIE, D.D. 



i. 

Post 8vo., 7s. 6d., 

THE PARABLES, 
READ IN THE LIGHT OF THE PRESENT DAY. 



II. 

Post 8yo., 7s. 6d., 

MAN AND THE GOSPEL. 



"This volume exhibits very forcibly 
the characteristics of Dr. Guthrie's mind. 
There is a broad and simple and faithful 
enunciation of gospel truth, an ardent 
and affectionate earnestness of expostu- 
lation, a wide and generous sympathy 
with good men and good deeds wherever 
they are found, and a felicitous and most 
exuberant flow of choice and accurate 
illustration of the subject in hand. The 
book is its own witness ; and since the 
voice that used to charm and instruct is 
now silenced, let us rejoice that the 
mind is not dimmed, nor the imagination 
quenched, nor the large heart con- 
tracted, nor the pen rusted, of him 
whose name it bears."— Weekly Review. 



" In point of striking thought, as well 
as apposite and beautiful illustration, this 
work will stand comparison with any 
which bears its author's name. The sub- 
jects of which it treats are as varied as 
they are interesting, and belong to that 
class which, as Lord Bacon says, ' come 
home to men's business and bosoms.' 
Instead of being treated, moreover, in a 
dry or abstract manner, they are treated 
in "such a way as to arrest the attention 
of the reader, and keep alive his interest 
from first to last without a sense of 
weariness or exhaustion. The illustra- 
tions are exquisitely beautiful, and not 
a few of the thoughts arc strikingly new 
and just." — Edinburgh t'ourant. 



Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. ; Pocket Edition, 2s., 

SPEAKING TO THE HEART. 



"Dr. Guthrie never speaks without 
speaking to the heart ; but these discourses 
bear with unwonted vividness the impress 
of his great emotional nature. They glow, 
they sparkle, they bum with intense feel- 
ing. AVe have seldom looked into a more 
fascinating book." — English Churchman. 

" This volume shows us that the author 
has given all his powers to his work. AVe 
feel that our life has been enriched by it, 



and that our spiritual vitality is fuller. 
It is not only one of the best, but it is so 
written that we venture to say it will be 
one of the most popular books of the 
season." — Daily Review. 

" This volume is worthy of the reputa- 
tion its author has won, and will be read 
with profit by thousands."— Manchester 
Examiner. 



IV. 



32mo., cloth antique, Is. 6d., 

THE ANGELS' SONG. 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDER STEAHAff. 

WORKS BY NOEMAS MACLEOD, D.D., 

ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S CHAPLAINS. 



I. 

Small 4to., 14s., with 70 illustrations, 

EASTWARD. 

■ It is the most enjoyable book on the I " Dr. Macleod's account of his travels 
Holy Land we have ever read."— Xon- ( is both entertaining and instructive. — 
coti/onnist. ■ Times. 

II. 

Tenth Thousand, crown Svo., cloth, price 3s. 6d., 

THE OLD LIEUTENANT AND HIS SON. 

"Beyond any book that we know this I produce manly kindness and manly piety." 
story of Norman Macleod's will tend to | —Patriot. 

III. 

Sixteenth Thousand, crown Svo., cloth, price 3s. 6d., 

THE EARNEST STUDENT; 

BEING MEMORIALS OF JOHN MACKINTOSH. 

IT. 
Tenth Thousand, crown 8vo., cloth, 3s. 6d., 

PARISH PAPERS; 
PERSONAL, SOCIAL, AND CONGREGATIONAL. 

V. 

Eighth Thousand, in cloth and gold, 3s. 6d. ; Cheaper Edition, 2s. 6d., 

THE GOLD THREAD: 

A STOEY FOR THE YOUNG. 

Beautifully Illustrated by J. D. Watson, GorELAY Steell, and 

J. Macwhieteb. 

VI. 

Thirty -fifth Thousand, price 6d., 

WEE DAVIE. 

VII. 

In Shilling Packets of fifteen copies for distribution, 

JOB JACOBS AND HIS BOXES: 

A STORY OF SAYINGS BANKS AND FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. 

VIII. 

Small Svo., 2s. 6d., 

SIMPLE TRUTH 

SPOKEN TO WORKING PEOPLE. 

IX. 

In the press, post 8vo., 

REMINISCENCES OF A HIGHLAND PARISH, 



10 LIST OF BOOKS 



WOEKS BY THE BEY. E. H. PLUMPTKE, M.A., 

PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, AND CHAPLAIN, KING'S COLLEGE. 



I. 

Small 8vo., 6s., 

THEOLOGY AND LIFE. 

"There is a degree of freshness and of I metal, and are of intrinsic value inde 
originality about^Mr. Plumptre's sermons, | pendently of their suitableness to the 
which is wanting in a large majority of I immediate purpose of their delivery." — 
discourses. They contain the ring of true | Press. 

II. 

8vo., sewed, 6d., 

SUNDAY. 

REPRINTED, WITH ADDITIONS, FROM THE " CONTEMPORARY REVIEW." 

" A learned, comprehensive, and singularly candid and valuable treatise." — 
Scotsman. 

III. 
Two Vols., crown 8vo., 12s., 

THE TRAGEDIES OF SOPHOCLES. 

A New Translation, with, a Biographical Essay. 

"Let us say at once that Professor Plump- f able for its felicity than its fidelity; a 
tre has not only surpassed the previous really readable and enjoyable version of 
translators of Sophocles, but has produced , the old plays."— Pall Mall Gazette. 
a work of singular merit, not less remark- i 

IV. 

Second Edition, small 8vo., 5s., 
LAZARUS, AND OTHER POEMS. 

"Out of a whole pile of religious poetry, | "Professor Plumptre's freshness and 
original and selected, which rises like a ' ~" 
castle before us, only one volume (Mr. 
Plumptre's Poems) demands that particu- 
lar attention which is due to merit of an 
uncommon order." — Gxiardian. 



originality of thought in treating familiar 
subjects give a great charm to what Ave 
may term his Biblical Idyls." — Churchman. 



V. 

Small 8vo., 5s., 

MASTER AND SCHOLAR, 
AND OTHER POEMS, ORIGINAL AND TRANSLATED. 

VI. 
In preparation, demy 8vo., 
CHRIST AND CHRISTENDOM: 
BEING THE BOYLE LECTURES FOR 1866. 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDEE STEAHAN. 



11 



WORKS BY C. J. VAUGELOT, D.D., 



YICAR OP DOXCASTER. 



Small 3vo., 4s. 6d., 

CHARACTERISTICS OF CHRIST'S TEACHING, 
DRAWN FROM THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 



II. 

Small Svo., 4s. 6d., 

CHRIST THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 

" Most admirable sermons, moderate, I being recommended as models for uni- 
earnest, scriptural. They are worthy of j versa! imitation.' —Press. 



III. 

Small Svo., 4s. 6d., 

PLAIN WORDS ON CHRISTIAN LIVING. 



"There is a self-controlled abstinence 
from rhetoric in Dr. Yaughan's sermons, 
accompanied by a power and freshness of 
thought, which* gives them the reality that 
other writers sometimes seek through a 
strained ' unprofessionality ' of tone." Dr. 



Yausrhan's last volume, ' Plain Words on 
Christian Living,' strikes us as no less 
scholar-like in style, and more instructive 
in mattei, than its predecessors." — Guar- 
dian. 



IY. 

In the press, small 8vo., 

VOICES OF THE PROPHETS 
ON EAITH, PRATER, AND HOLY LIVING. 

" They knew Him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets, which are read 
every sabbath day."— Acts xiii. 



12 LIST OF BOOKS 



Jfusi |)ttlrlisfyjeir. 



COSAS DE ESPANA: 
ILLUSTRATIVE OF SPAIN AND THE SPANIARDS AS THEY ARE. 

By Mes. WILLIAM PITT BYRNE, 

Author of "Flemish Interiors," &c. 

Two Volumes, 8vo., with Illustrations. Price 21s. 



SIX MONTHS AMONGTHECHARITIES OFEUROPE. 
By JOHN DE LIEFDE. 

Two Volumes. Post 8vo., with Hlustrations, 22s. 



CITOYENNE JACQUELINE: 

A WOMAN'S LOT IN THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

By SARAH TYTLER. 

Popular Edition, in One Volume. Crown 8vo., with Frontispiece, 6s. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE: 
By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

With Twenty-four Woodcuts by Linton, from Drawings by J. Gordon 
Thomson. Small 8vo., 6s. 

People's Edition. Paper Coyer, 1». 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDEK STRAHAX. 



13 



MILLAIS'S ILLUSTRATIONS. 

A COLLECTION" OP DRAWINGS OK" WOOD. 

By JOHN EYEEETT MILLAIS, E.A. 

Demy 4to., cloth gilt, 16s. 



" Foremost among the Illustrated Books 
deserves to be named Mr. Millais's ' Col- 
lected Illustrations.' Mr. Millais has quali- 
ties as an artist with which few authors 
can dare a comparison. "What these quali- 
ties are may be inferred from the fact that 
here are his best illustrations collected to- 
gether, separate from the text to which 



they belonged. They are works of art 
that need no letterpress— no comment: 
they speak for themselves, and have an 
interest by themselves. They nearly all 
display extraordinary power, and some of 
them are in their way quite perfect."— 
Times. 



TANGLED TALK: 

AX ESSAYIST'S HOLIDAY. 

Second Edition. Post 8vo., 7s. 6d. 



HENRY HOLBEACH: 

STUDENT IX LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY. 

A Narrative and a Discussion. 

With Letters to Mr. Matthew Arnold, Mr. Alexander Bain, Mr. Thomas 
Carlyle, Mr Arthur Helps, Mr. G-. H. Lewes, Rev. H. L. Mansel, Rev. 
F. D. Maurice, Mr. John Stuart Mill, and Rev. Dr. J. H. .Newman. 

Second Edition, with Additions, 14s. 

"In the picture of the obscure Puritan I " "We have never been more puzzled than 
colony there are touches worthy of George in the attempt to give our leaders a. just 
Eliot."— Spectator. I idea of this remarkable book."— Guardian. 



"THE LIFE AND LIGHT OF MEN." 

By JOHN YOUNG, LL.D. (Edin.), 

Author of " The Christ of History." 

Post 8vo., 7s. 6d. 

" "Worked out with great skill, and illus- I " As acute in argument as it is reverent 
trated with considerable beauty."— Pa- i in spirit."— Clerical Journal, 
triot. I 



14 



LIST OF BOOKS 



MISCELLANIES FROM THE COLLECTED 
WRITINGS OF EDWARD IRVING. 

Post 8vo., 6s. 



" It is "by such a volume as this, we are 
inclined to think, that Irving will come to 
he widely known to general readers. There 
are passages of purely theological character 
which, Ave think, display profound wisdom, 
and are models of clear, strong-living 



' sayings ' that are as gold and rubies and 
diamonds. We entirely approve the prin- 
ciple of its compilation, and welcome it as 
fitted, in a very remarkable manner, to 
quicken genuine and deep religious feeling, 
and to impart earnestness and force to the 



utterance. There are practical and ethical religious life."— Xonconformist, 



THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF EDWARD IRVING. 

Edited by his [Nephew, the Eev. G. CARLYLE, M.A. 

5 Vols., demy 8vo., £3. 



" Notwithstanding the ahundance of 
weak and washy books on practical reli- 
gion that pour forth from the press and 
attain a vast circulation, which is too 
often mistaken for the test of merit, we 
can really boast of some writers who are 
worthy of a place heside the men of the 
seventeenth century. . . . But we 
hasten, after this loner preface, to call the 
attention of our readers more especially to 
the writings of a Scottish Presbyterian 
minister, who, perhaps more than any 
divine of this century, bears a resemblance, 
in his grandeur of imagery , in his passion- 
ate manner of thinking, in his intensity of 
belief, and in his perfect command of the 
appliances of style, to the older divines. 
In this respect, however, there is some- 
thing Miltonic in him, and he hears a 
greater resemblance to the Puritanic than 
the so-called Anglican divines. He is ter- 
ribly in earnest! he is bursting to cry 
aloud ! and his thoughts of God and man 
rush forth in an uncontrollable torrent. 
With all his faults there is about him a 
sublimity as of the old prophets— a tender- 
ness too*, and a refinement mixed up with 
all his brilliance, that take the hearer and 
the reader captive. We have had in this 
century no lack of the highest eloquence, 
whether spoken or written ; hut assuredly 
no man's eloquence in cur century has sur- 
passed that of Edward Irving, and what is 
very rare, it is eloquence that will bear to 
he read ; it is not less potent and seductive 
on the printed page than when it fell on 
listening cars. ... So then at length 
we all have the means of knowing what 
manner of man Edward Irving was. We 



can discard the traditions of his career, and 
study him for ourselves as he appears in 
the writings to which he has put his hand. 
It was right that these works should he all 
collected. Edward Irving had the power 
of reaching the true sublime, and the Eng- 
lish language can show no more magnifi- 
cent specimens of religious eloquence than 
those which are contained in his Collected 
Writings."— Times. 

" No one can read these volumes without 
being impressed with much more than the 
eloquence of Edward Irving. Eloquent he 
was. with a rich and stately eloquence, 
rising at times to the height even of those 
great models— Taylor, Hooker, and Barrow 
—from whom he seems to have sought his 
inspiration. But besides this, he was a 
fine expositor, seeing deeply into the preg- 
nant sense of Scripture, and applying most 
closely and practically the truths which he 
brings out." — London Quarterly Review. 

"The greatest preacher the world has 
seen since apostolic times."— Blackwood's 
Magazine. 

" Irving, almost alone among recent 
men, lived his sermons and preached his 
life. His words, more than those of any 
other modern speaker, were ' life passed 
through the fire of thought.' He said out 
his inmost heart, and this it is that makes 
his writings read like a prolonged and 
ideal biography." — Saturday Ecvieir. 

" It was time that one who cannot be 
forgotten should possess some worthy 
monument; and nothing more fitting 
could be built up for him than these 
memorials of his genius." — English 
Churchman. 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDER STEAHA1ST. 



15 



SERMONS AND EXPOSITIONS. 

By the late JOHN EOBEETSON, D.D., 

Glasgow Cathedral. 

Crown 8vo., 7s. 6d. 

"Dr. Robertson had not a superior! added that a more genial, kindly, liberal- 

aniong the Scotch clergy : for manly grasp minded and honest man never walked this 

of mind, for pith and point in treating his earth." — Fraser's Magazine, 
subject, he had hardly an equal. Let it be 



ECCLESIA DEI: 

THE PLACE AND FUNCTIONS OF THE CHURCH IN THE 

DIVINE ORDER OF THE UKIYERSE, AND ITS 

RELATIONS WITH THE WORLD. 

Demy 8vo., 7s. 6d. 



Eightieth Thousand. 32mo., Is. 6d. 

THE PATHWAY OF PROMISE. 



Preparation for the Jour- 
ney. 
Promised Blessing. 
The Bow in the Cloud. 
Duty and Interest. 
Guardianship. 
J ehovah, 



Contentment. 

Diligence. 

Daily Strength. 

Progress. 

Assurance. 

Carefulness. 

Abiding with God. 



Gratitude. 

Prayer. 

Divine Teaching. 

Fidelity. 

God's Presence. 

Rest. 



Twentieth Thousand. Small 8vo., 2s. 6d. 

ABLE TO SAVE; 

Ob, ENCOURAGEMENT TO PATIENT WAITING. 



The Chastening Rod. 
Tain is the Help of Man. 
The Cry of Distress. 
Past Joys. 
Submission. 
Thou art my God, 



The Remembrancer. 
Not Forsaken, 
lie not Afraid. 
If Need Be. 
Heavier Sorrows. 
Sunshine. 



Grace Sufficient. 
Ifthe Lord "Will. 
The Swelling of Jordan. 
Bearing Fruit. 
Christian Joy. 
Contentment. 



Eighth Thousand. Small 8vo., 2s. 6d. 

THE THRONE OF GRACE. 



Gracious Invitation. 
Answered Prayer. 
Promised Help. 
The Mighty Intercessor. 



The Compassionate High 

Priest. 
Help and Deliverance. 
More Grace. 
A Divine Promise. 



Christian Joy. 
Mutual Prayer. 
Persevering Prayer. 
A Sacred Pledge. 



1G 



LIST OF BOOKS 



CHRISTIAN COMPANIONSHIP FOR RETIRED 
HOURS. 

Gilt, 3s. 6d. 



"The book successfully carries out the 1 
object pointed at in its title, and will prove | 



a useful companion for the Christian in 
hours of retirement."— Edinburgh Courant. 



CONVERSION: 

ILLUSTRATED BY EXAMPLES RECORDED IN THE BIBLE. 

By the Rev. ADOLPH SAPHIR. 

Cheap Edition. Small 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



" Mr. Saphir has a quick and beautiful 
appreciation of those phases of life and 
thought which he undertakes to depict.' 
and, in a style which is marked by much 
simplicity and gracefulness, displays the 
themes of his discourses. The volume 
forms a very pleasant and hallowed book 
for quiet Sunday afternoons. " — Christian 
World. 

" With its deep insight, its glowing tone 
of love and gladness, and its abundance 
of thought, original, wise, and beautiful, 



this is a rare and remarkable book. Mr. 
Saphir is a ' householder who bringeth 
fox-th out of his treasure things new and 
old ; ' and whilst he secures our confidence 
by his loyalty to the unchanging verities, 
he deserves our gratitude for many new 
and happy applications. Nor do we 
know many books where so much scholar- 
ship is brought to bear with so little 
ostentation, nor many books adapted to 
so wide a range of readers." — English 
Presbyterian Messenger. 



MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE AND PHILANTHROPIC LABOURS OF 
ANDREW REED, D.D., 

Prepared from Autobiographic Sources, by his Sons, 
ANDREW REED, B.A., and CHARLES REED, F.S.A. 
With Portrait and Woodcuts. Second Edition. Demy 8vo., 12s. 

" A profoundly interesting piece of " The sons of Andrew Reed have done a 

biography."— Weekly Messenger. good work in publishing this memorial 

"The best biography of the age."— of their father."— Athenceum. 
British Standard. 



STORY OF THE LIVES OF CAREY, MARSHMAN, 

AND WARD. 

(A Popular Edition of the large Two-volume Work.) 

By JOHN C. MARSHMAN. 

Sixth Thousand. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDEK STRAHAN. 



17 



PRAYING AND WORKING. 



By the Rev. W. FLEMING STEVENS ON. 

Fifteenth Thousand. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



"The liyes of such men as are here 
delineated give bright and powerful illus- 
tration to the relation of devotion and faith 
to the common work of life. Mr. Stevenson 
writes with clearness and force. That he 
is a man discerningly appreciative of the 
elements and unfoldings of character, is 
evident in almost every page in his work ; 
and that he has been guided by a simply 
spiritual purpose, both very noble and very 



practical, is the secret of the power and 
persuasiveness with which he has written . " 
— Nonconform ist. 

" This record of men's faith in God's help 
and guidance will be read with interest 
and sympathy.'' — Athencpum, 

" The work is instructive in material, 
discriminating in judgment, healthy in 
spirit, and thoroughly useful in its ten- 
dency." — Homilist. 



HEADS AND HANDS IN THE WORLD OF LABOUR. 



By the Rev. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D., E.E.S.E. 

Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



" I have read ' Heads and Hands in the 
World of Labour ' with the liveliest in- 
terest. Its curious and entertaining de- 
tails, the kindly and Christian tone which 
it uses both to masters and workers, the 
examples which it holds up both for imi- 
tation and warning, the sagacity and pru- 
dence which characterise its practical sug- 
gestions, and the exceedingly attractive 
style in which the whole is set forth, 
leave nothing to be desired, but that 
every buyer and seller of labour- in the 
country had a copy of it, and imbibed its 
spirit."— Extract from a Letter of the Rev. 
Or. (xuthric. 



i " It bristles everywhere with facts, and 
! is rich with sage "remarks and pregnant 

principles. If our readers will only coin- 
! mit themselves to the author's guidance, 
i and make with him the grand tour of the 
I working-world of Britain — among its fac- 
I tories, its workshops, its warerooms, its 
1 printing offices, its foundries, its mines 
[ and collieries, its shops and offices, its 

farms and haynelds, its barracks and 
! messrooms — they will be able to spend 

with the most genial of companions some 

pleasant and profitable time." — North 
, British Daily Jlail. 



WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CHURCH. 

BEING HISTOKICAL NOTES ON DEACONESSES AND 
SISTEKHOODS. 

By JOHN MALCOLM LUDLOW. 

Small 8vo., 5s. 



" Of the importance of the subject of this 
book there can be no question, and Mr. 
Ludlow has brought to its discussion an 
intense sympathy, a large amount of in- 
formation, and a calm, judicial spirit. — 
British Quarterly Review. 

" We recommend this work to the care- 



ful study of all who are anxious for the 
full development of Church work in the 
Church of England." — Clerical Journal. 

" The book is ably written ; and the 
author, from the earnest study and atten- 
tion he has given to the subject, was well 
qualified to write it." — London Review. 



18 



LIST OF BOOKS 



BLIND BARTIMEUS, AND HIS GREAT 

PHYSICIAN. 

By the Eev. J. HOGE. 

In neat cloth, Is. 



LIFE THOUGHTS. 
By HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

Cloth antique, 2s. 6d. 

"Every page is covered with sentences shrewdness, and piety are admirably blend 

full of life,— rich, deep, strong, I eautiful. ed. Taking this book as a whole, we can 

You will search in it vainly for au . it that's only say the like of it will not soon occur 

dull. The facility of illustration manifested again, unless we have more of Beecher's 

is marvellous. Knowledge, imagination, 'Life Thoughts.' " — Evangelical Magazine. 



PLAIN WORDS ON HEALTH. 

By JOHN BROWN, M.D., 

Author of "Rab and his Friends," &c. 
Small 8vo., 6d. 



"A racy, eloquent, colloquial talk to 
working people about the doctor, the man- 
agement of children, and the preservation 
of health, worthy of being put side by 
side with Miss Nightingale's 'Notes on 
Nursing.' ''—Patriot. 

"In his powerful and clear and beauti- 
fully simple way, the Doctor gives the 
people much valuable counsel on the 
question of health and its preservation. 
It is surprising how much wisdom he puts 



into so little room, and with what words of 
kindness and what telling anecdotes— these 
drawn from his own experience— he makes 
this little medical work as interesting as 
if it were a powerfully written romance. 
Need we say more to commend the book to 
our readers'? Not we. The Doctor's name 
is a household word, and this, his latest 
volume, will soon be in the hands of the 
tens of thousands of the admirers of ' Kab 
and his Friends.' "—Dundee Advertiser. 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDER STRAHAN. 19 

A DUTCHMAN'S DIFFICULTIES WITH THE 
ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 

Fancy cover, 6d. 



LESSONS FROM A SHOEMAKER'S STOOL. 
By JOHN KERR, 

Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. 
Fancy cover, 6d. 



THE STILL HOUR. 

By AUSTIN PHELPS. 

Cheap Edition, sewed, 4d. 



ON BEING ILL. 
By the Rev. A. W. THOROLD, M.A. 

Sewed, 2d. 



ON THE LOSS OF FRIENDS. 
By the Rev. A. W. THOROLD, M.A. 

Sewed, 3d. By Post, 4d. 



WHEN OUR CHILDREN ARE ABOUT US. 

By ALEXANDER RALEIGH, D.D. 

Sewed, 2d. 



THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE. 
By W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D., 

Author of "Better Days for "Working People," &c, &c. 
Sewed, 2d. 



20 



LIST OF BOOKS 



A YEAR AT THE SHORE. 



A COMPANION BOOK FOR THE SEA-SIDE. 

By PHILIP HENRY GOSSE, F.R.S. 

With Thirty-six Illustrations by the Author, printed in Colours by 
Leighto^ Brothers. 

Crown 8vo., 9s. 



" Tarious and interesting as are the books j 
devoted to the sea and its inhabitants, we | 
do not remember to hare read one more i 

complete than this Observing | 

with an intelligent eye, Mr. Gosse writes 



The study of natural history is always in- 
teresting, and Mr. Gosse is a genial and 
enthusiastic instructor." — Illustrated Lon- 
don Neics. 

As a handbook to the sea-shore, this 



in a natural and graphic manner of his I new book of Mr. Gosses will now be the 
marine acquaintances." — Literary Gazette. | most frequently asked for." — Publishers' 
" A delicious book deliciously illustrated. I Circular. 



THE REGULAR SWISS ROUND. 

IN THEEE TRIPS. 

By the Eev. HARRY JONES, M.A. 

With Illustrations by Edwaed Whtmpee. Second Edition, small 8vo., 5s. 



" Contains much valuable information | 

for the inexperienced tourist." — Patriot. \ 

" Mr. Jones's book will no doubt find and 



please many readers ; the brisk and pointed 
stvle of the book will give pleasure in 
itself."— Pall Hall Gazette. 



A SUMMER IN SKYE. 
By ALEXANDER SMITH. 

Popular Edition, with Coloured Frontispiece, Crown 8vo.,6s. 



"Mr. Smith has great command of 
language. Every page displays ingenious 
expressions, highly wrought comparisons, 
minute descriptions. ' A Summer in Skye ' 
is to us very interesting indeed." — Saturday 
Review. 

" Eor the future let no tourist visit the 
Hebrides without these volumes in his 
portmanteau. Mr. Alexander Smith speaks 
of Boswell's Journal as ' delicious reading ; ' 
his own work , though after a very different 
fashion, affords delicious reading also. 
The food provided is unlike that provided 
by the guide writer. Here you Avill gain 
more wisdom than knowledge, more sug 
gestions than facts, more of what is felici- 
tous in expression, than of what is precise 
in detail. Mr. Smith can , when he pleases, 
describe Highland life and Highland sce- 



' nery with considerable felicity, but he 

s likes best to relate the impression made 

upon his own mind by what he heard or 

saw. His egotism is never offensive ; it is 

often very charming. If the traveller is 

1 sometimes lost in the essayist, who will 

i not prefer an Elia to a Pennant ? " — 

Daily Xeivs. 

" There is in this work so much excellent 

i writing, good thought, and picturesque 

; description, that it must rank among the 

I very best books of the season. . . Since 

' the great Professor Christopher North's 

time, there has been no greater landscape 

| painter in words than Mr. Smith, and the 

I ' Summer in Skye ' is by far his best effort 

j in this branch of literature."— Inverness 

Courier. 
i 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDER STRAHAN. 



DREAMTHORP. 
A BOOK OF ESSAYS WRITTEN m THE COUNTRY. 

By ALEXANDER SMITH, 
Author of "A Summer in Skye," &c. 

Sixth Thousand. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



u These essays are characterised by force 
of expression and a tenderness of feeling 
rarely to be met with. Mr. Alexander 
Smith is remarkable for his love of nature, 
and for the pleasing language in which he 
describes the beauties of the common earth. 
He has now given us a book full of noble 
thoughts."— DaUy News. 

" Mr. Alexander Smith comes to us with 
more natural vitality, with a culture that is 



rarer, and with a broader, deeper range of 
sympathy than any one who has attempted 
essay writing, in the proper sense, in his 
own day." — Nonconformist. 

" . ". . A book to be read in the spirit 
of lazy leisure to the sound of bubbling 
brooks and whispering woods. It is exqui- 
sitely printed, handy, handsome, and 
cheap." — Athenceum. 



THE NEAR AND THE HEAVENLY HORIZONS. 
By the COUNTESS DE GASPARIN. 

Twenty-seventh Thousand. Crown 8vo., gilt cloth antique, 3s. 6d. 

" This is a charming book. Madame de i '" The Xearandthe Heavenly Horizons 
Gasparin has the touch of genius which is a book full of beauty and" pathos."— 
has the stranse gift of speaking to every ' British Quarterly Review. 
one ' in their own tongue.' "—Athenceum. 1 



HUMAN SADNESS. 

By the COUNTESS DE GASPARIN, 

Author of "The Near and the Heavenly Horizons." 

Fourth Thousand. Small 8vo., 5s. 

" There are times when the soul craves to these desires, and has done so in beauti- 
an utterance for its deeper longings. The ful and affecting language.' —London JRe- 
Countess de Gasparin has given expression view. 



ESSAYS ON WOMAN'S WORK. 

By BESSIE RAYNER PARKES. 

Small Svo., -is. 
' Every woman ought to read Miss Parkes's little volume on Woman's Work."'— Times. 



22 



LIST OF BOOKS 



THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 

First Series. Popular Edition. 
Twenty-fourth Thousand. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



" It is impossible not to be pleased with 
the ' Recreations of a Country Parson,' or 
to feel otherwise than on the best pos- 
sible terms with the Author."— Saturday 
Review. 



" These delightful papers are full of the 
best qualities of the best essayists ; they 
show close observation, clear insight, wit, 
humour, fancy, feeling, and humanity."— 
Inverness Courier. 



THE GRAVER THOUGHTS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 

By the Author of " Recreations of a Country Parson." 

Thirty-second Thousand. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



" This volume will be a permanent source 
of recreation and refreshment. There is, 
throughout these? papers, a genial, cheer- 
ing, manly, and healthy spirit, which acts 
as a tonic to mind and body."— English 
Churchman. 



" Many of them are exquisite essays on 
the subjects of which they treat ; and in all 
there is a clearness and a simplicity, com- 
bined with the evidence of an original 
genius, which cannot fail to delight and 
instruct the reader." — Morning Post. 



COUNSEL AND COMFORT, SPOKEN FROM A 
CITY PULPIT. 

By the Author of "Recreations of a Country Parson." 

Fifteenth Thousand. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



PERSONAL NAMES IN THE BIBLE. 

By the Rev. W. F. WILKINSON, M.A., 

Yicar of St. Werburgh's, Derby, and Joint-Editor of "Webster and 

Wilkinson's Greek Testament." 

Small 8vo., 6s. 



"Mr. Wilkinson's illustration of the 
' Personal Names in the Hible ' will be 
found useful and interesting by many 
readers. . . . No names cf importance 
appear to have been omitted, and there is 
subjoined a useful, and indeed absolutely 
necessary index."— Westminster Review. 

" This is a book for all who would wisely, 
justly, and usefully study the sacred vol- 
ume." — llomilist. 



" This is a valuable book in many ways : 
learned, laborious, and interesting; full of 
matter in a small compass, which will be 
especially acceptable to the clergy. It will 
no doubt have, as it fully deserves, a large 
circulation." — Union Review. 

" ' Personal Names,' by Mr. Wilkinson, 
of Derby, exhibits much scholarship and 
research." — Christian Remembrancer. 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDEE STEAHAIS". 



23 



OUR INHERITANCE IN THE GREAT PYRAMID. 

By PEOFESSOE C. PIAZZI S^ITTH, F.E.SS.L. and E., 

Astronomer Royal for Scotland. 
With Photographs and Plates. Square 8vo., 12s. 

" This handsome volume is "well worthy " There can be no question as to the 
of a careful perusal."— Glasgow Herald. ' extraordinaiy research aud ingenuity 

" No hook which we hare seen contains j which this book displays." — Daily Re- 
so full an account of this wonderful monu- view. 
ment." — Morning Journal. 



GOD'S GLORY IN THE HEAVENS. 

Br WILLIAM LEITCH, D.D., 
Late Principal of Queen's College, Canada. 

Third Edition. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo., cloth extra, 6s. 

" "We cannot conclude our notice of Dr. practical observations and the highest and 
Leitch's book without dwelling upon the ; most ennobling sentiments. It is thus that 
admirable manner in which the astronomi- books on popular science ahould ever be 
oal facts contained in it are blended with written." — Header. 



MY MINISTERIAL EXPERIENCES. 

By the Eev. Dr. BUCHSEL, Berlin. 

Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



" Dr. Buchsel is not only a ' man of the 
time,' but one of the men who are for ail 
time. . . Had we a friend with a spare 
half-hour, we scarcely know any book that 
we could put into his'hand with more con- 
fidence, assured that, open it where he 
might, he could not fail to alight on some - 
thing that would make the half-hour 
memorable." — Daily Review. 

" This is an interesting volume. It con- 
tains very interesting accounts of the Ger- 
man Pietists, amongst whom Dr. Buchsel 



was constantly thrown, and who main- 
tained the pure gospel in the midst of 
abounding rationalism. The book is writ- 
ten in an entertaining style. It is full of 
anecdotes, which curiously illustrate a pas- 
tor's life in Germany." — Record. 

" "We heartily commend this little book 
as alike full of the interest of another 
religious life than ours, and of wise and 
holy counsels for theirs and ours alike.' — 
Patriot. 



WORK AND PLAY. 

A BOOK OF ESSAYS. 

By HOEACE BUSHNELL, D.D. 

Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



24 



LIST OF BOOKS 



OUTLINES OF THEOLOGY. 
By ALEXANDER VINET. 

Post 8vo., 8s. 



" The great field of theology can scarcely 
be said to be outlined in this book. Rather 
is it a collection of aphorisms, pensees, 
clustering round, and flashing gleams of 
light upon, the great theme of the relations 
-which subsist bet-ween God and man. And 



of the French original have been wonder- 
fully preserved in the English translation. 
But there is more than point, than the 
rhythm of melodious sentences, than the 
sparkle of illustration as of diamonds 
chased in gold, than the dexterity of 
if we accept it thus, -without seeking in it antithesis ; there is also the profundity, 
for the definiteness of a system, we shall the masculine strength of Pascalline 
find it profound, suggestive, eminently thought." — Daily Review. 
beautiful. The brilliancy and agile grace \ 



OUTLINES OF PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE. 
By ALEXANDER VINET. 

Post 8vo., 8s. 

" We need scarcely say that Yinet is an I a lucidity of expression that renders all he 
author with whose mind we have much | writes obvious at once to his readers. In 
sympathy, and of whose works we have j this respect Ave think he has had few 
a very high appreciation. He is always ; equals. But his writings exhibit the 



independent, generally suggestive, and 
ever devoutly thoughtful."— Homilist. 

" Yinet seemed to" us to possess a closer 
resemblance to Pascal in point of piquancy, . 
and to the late celebrated Dr. "Wardlaw for I 



highest elements of cultivated thought, 
and are baptized into the spirit of the most 
profound reverence for the Word of God." 
— Morning Star. 



THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR FAITH: 

TEN PAPERS RECENTLY READ BEFORE A MIXED AUDIENCE OF MEN. 

By Professors AUBERLEN, GESS, and others. 
Second Edition. Crown 8vo., 6s. 



" We know nothing that can compare 
with this work for completeness, wisdom, 
an d po wer . ' ' — Non conform ist. 

" A series of very able essays on the 



main points of Christian theology, by men 
who know how to sustain the truth 
against the more subtle forms of specu- 
lation." — British Quarterly Revieiv. 



ALFRED HAGART'S HOUSEHOLD. 



By ALEXANDER SMITH, 

Author of "A Life Drama," &c., &c. 
Two Volumes. Small 8vo., 12s. 



11 It is a sort of prose idyl, as dramatic in 
its details as ' Hermann and Dorothea.' " 
— Athenaeum. 

' This is a most interesting and delight- 



tating human life." — Caledonian Mer- 
cury. 

" No one can read ' Alfred Hasart's 
Household ' without a sense of keen en- 



ful novel— a bit of real, genuine, palpi joyment."— Guardian, 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDEE STEAHAN. 



THE LIFE OF OUR LORD. 

IX ITS HISTORICAL, GEOGRAPHICAL, AND GENEALOGICAL 
RELATIONS. 

By the Eev. SAMUEL J. ANDEEWS. 

Second Thousand. Crown 8vo,, cloth, 63. 6d. 



" Mr. Andrews has explored the evangelic 
histories with great critical keenness and 
sasaeity, and has brought a large amount 
of patient care and various learning to 
bear upon their exposition. The various 
points raised have been, of course, often 
discussed j but we know not where, in our 
language, we could find any work which 
treats them all in so copious and generally 
satisfactory a manner." — Freeman. 

" In college and school libraries, as well 



as in Christian families, this work must be 
both acceptable and useful." —Morni nq 
Star. 

" A sensible, thorough, and impartially 
written Harmony of the Gospels. . . . 
Will be found very useful to divinity stu- 
dents."— Guardian. 

"The author has laid the Christian 
student under deep obligation by this 
scholarly contribution to Scripture truth." 
— Witness. 



THE PATIENCE OF HOPE. 

By DOEA GEEEISTWELL. 

Third Edition. Small 8vo., 2s. 6d. 

"This is the most thoughtful and sugges- I 'thoughts that wander through eternity,' 
tive book of our day."— Witness. i increases every time we take up this won- 

" Our admiration of the searching, fear- ; derful little book."— North British Review. 
less speculation, the wonderful power of j " A work of singular philosophic power, 
speaking clearly upon dark and all but as well as poetic beauty." — Family 
unspeakable subjects, the rich outcome of I Treasury. 



PRESENT HEAVEN. 

By DOEA GEEENWELL. 
Third Edition. Small 8vo., 2s. 6d. 



"The production of a thoughtful, cul 
tivated CI 



great fulness and beauty the present privi- 
nristian mind, setting forth in | leges of the believer."— Baptist Magazine. 



TWO FRIENDS. 

By DOEA GEEENWELL. 

Small 8vo., 3s. 6d. 

" We cannot read these pages without I thoushtful and earnest mind.' 
seeing that they are the production of a j Review. 



28 



LIST OF BOOKS 



jsfttxialrk ^xtBtntntian Woxks 

FOR THE YOUNG. 

IN ELEGANT CLOTH BINDINGS. 



STORIES TOLD TO A CHILD. 

By the Author of " Studies for Stories." 
Illustrated, 3s. 6d. 
' For the very young it is one of the hest gift-books yet published."— Patriot. 



WORDSWORTH'S POEMS FOR THE YOUNG. 

Illustrated by John Macwhiktee and John Pettie, with a Vignette by 
J. E. Millais. 3s. 6d. 



"A very elegant volume, full of charm- 
ma: -woodcuts." These poems are for the 
better moments, the quiet hours of boys 
;md girls. The illustrations are full of 
cleverness, sweetness, and truth." — Scots- 
man. 



"A perfectly charming book for the 
young." — Reader. 

" One of the prettiest books imaginable 
as a present for the young it can scarcely 
be surpassed." — Morning Journal. 



STUDIES FOR STORIES, FROM GIRLS' LIVES. 

Popular Edition, with Illustrations by J. E. Millais and others. 
Crown Svo., 6s. 



"Simple in style, -warm -with human 
affection, and -written in faultless English, 
these five stories are studies for the artist, 
sermons for the thoughtful, and a rare 
source of delight for all who can find plea - 
sure in really good -works of fiction. . . 
They are prose poems, carefully meditated 
and exquisitely touched in by a teacher 
ready to sympathize with every joy and 
sorrow. 1 ' — Athencenm. 



" There could not be a better book to put 
into the hands of young ladies." — Specta- 
tor. 

" Each of these studies is a drama in 
itself, illustrative of the operation of some 
particular passion— such as envy, misplaced 
ambition, sentimentalism, indolence, jea- 
lousy. In all of them the actors are young 
girls, and we cannot imagine a better book 
for young ladies."— Pall Mall Gazette. 



THE MAGIC MIRROR: 

A ROUND OF TALES FOR OLD AND YOUNG. 

By WILLIAM GILBERT. 

With Illustrations. Crown 8vo., 5s. 

" The stories are well told in the best j ing an unhackneyed mode of treatment." 
style for children, and the little woodcuts — Times. 
to illustrate them have the merit of show- I 



PUBLISHED BY ALEXANDER STEAHAN. 



2:7 



PAPERS FOR THOUGHTFUL GIRLS; 

WITH ILLUSTKATIYE SKETCHES OF SOME GIRLS' LIVES. 

By SARAH TYTLEE. 



With Illustrations by J. E. Millais, RA. Crown 8vo., 



" We cordially advise those who have 
girls to put Miss Tytler's 'Papers' into 
their hands." — London Review. 

" One of the most charming books of its 
class that we have ever read. It is even 
superior to Miss Mulock's well-known 
work, ' A Woman's Thoughts about Wo- 
men.' . . . Miss Tytler has produced a 



work which will be popular in many a 
home when her name has become among 
her own friends nothing more than a 
memory." — Morning Herald. 

" We* wish that half the novels of the day 
were as wholesome and suggestive as these 
' Papers for Thoughtful Girls.' " — Econo- 
mist. 



BEGINNING LIFE. 

A BOOK FOR YOUNG MEN. 

By PRINCIPAL TULLOCH. 

Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 



" Principal Tulloch's excellent book for 
young men." — Edinburgh Recicir. 

" Principal Tulloch speaks as a friend to 
friends, with hearty sympathy for every 
difficulty, and with "a clear insight of the 
truth that will resolve the difficulty."— 
Scotsnict7i. 



"We hope that our wealthier readers 
will put this volume into the hands of 
many young men who could not otherwise 
procure it. It is a book that will well 
sustain the reputation of its author." — 
Baptist Magazine. 



THE POSTMAN'S BAG. 



A STORY-BOOK FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. 



By JOHN DE LIEFDE. 

New Edition, Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 



" John de Liefde is a man whom to 
know is to admire and love. This little 
volume is simple, artless, and Christian. 
We kn. w several little children who are 
never a eary of these little stories, and 
we ar? i ure that they can learn from them 
nothin: but what is good." London Review. 

" Co- mend us to Mr. Liefde for a plea- 
sant Sv.ory, whether in the parlour or on 



the printed page. He is himself a story- 
book, full of infectious humour, racy 
anecdote, youthful freshness, and warm- 
hearted religion. In this pretty little 
volume we do not get any of his more 
elaborate tales ; it is professedly a book 
'for boys and girls,' and is made up of 
short stories and fables, the very things to 
win children's hearts.'" — Patriot. 



28 



LIST OF BOOKS. 



IDYLS AND LEGENDS OF 1NVERBURN. 

By EOBEET BUCHANAN, 
Author of " Undertones." 

Second Edition. Small 8vo., 5s. 

" A volume of genuine poetry of distin- I modern poetry so rich in tenderly told story, 
guished merit." — Pall Jlall Gazette. \ beautifully painted picture, and abundant 

" We do not call to mind any volume of | spontaneous music." — Illustrated Times. 



UNDERTONES. 
By EOBEET BUCHANAN. 

Second Edition. Eevised and Enlarged. Small 8vo., 5s. 



" The offspring of a true poet's heart and 
brain, they are full of imagination, fancy, 
thought, and feeling ; of subtle perception 



of beauty, and harmonious expression."— 
Daily News. 
" Poetry, and of a noble kind."— Athe- 



DUCHESS AGNES, Etc. 
By ISA CEAIGL 

Second Edition. Small 8vo., cloth, 5s. 

" In Miss Craig's poems we feel through- | ment which renders like wax the living 
nut a genuine harmony of conception, a I impressions made upon it." — Spectator. 
musical feeling, a soft receptive tempera- [ 



CHRISTINA, AND OTHER POEMS. 
By DOEA GEEENWELL. 

Small 8vo., 6s. 



" Miss Greenwell is specially endowed as 
a writer of sacred poetry ; and it is the 
rarest realm of all, with the fewest com- 
petitors for its crown. She seems to us to 
be peculiarly fitted with natural gifts for 
entering into the chambers of the human 



heart, and to be spiritually endowed to 
walk there, with a brightening influence, 
cheering, soothing, exalting, with words 
of comfort and looks of love, as a kind of 
Florence Nightingale walking the hospital 
of ailing souls." — Athenaeum. 



ALEXANDEE STEAHAN, LONDON AND NEW YOEK. 



